


Speaks to the Trees

by draylon



Series: Captain of Mordor [5]
Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 14:20:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10515495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draylon/pseuds/draylon
Summary: A stand-alone-ish sequel to ‘Orc in Ithilien,’ mostly featuring a load of Orcs skipping about in a forest.





	1. A walk in the dark

 

 

Just after sunset, and it was already dark under the trees at the edge of the wood.  Winter still lingered in the highest passes of the mountains, but here the first celandines, their petals closed against the cool of the evening, were already blooming all along the bank.  Deeper into the little ravine, where the air was still and rang with the chattering sounds of water falling over rock, it was noticeably warmer than out under the empty, windswept sky, and in amongst the trees the gentle exhalations from fresh, unfurling fronds of leaf-growth perfumed the air with a delicate, green scent.

Here in the shelter of their mountain gorge the hazel bushes grew as high as the wind-shortened trees that were also found at this altitude.  Their glossy, grey-brown limbs were bare of leaves as yet but there were lambs’-tail catkins, laden with dusty pollen, hanging down in glorious abundance from every branch.  In a mossy nook, down among the hazel roots that clung to the bare rock of the hillside, were drifts of wind-flowers and sweet-scented moschatel, and in the open space at the sides of the tumbling stream, early primroses just coming into bud.  A late-singing blackbird, safe in his little haven of wood and watercourse, warbled a few last notes of liquid melody against the darkening sky.

It was the first flush of springtime and the stars were shining faintly through a cool, greeny-yellow dusk as a stately figure, tall, slim and silent, made his way down the ravine between the trees, treading lightly through the stands of spring flowers and stepping with great care.  He was bare-headed and his long hair swung straight, glimmering faintly like silver as it caught the starlight; the hem of his fine woollen cloak, which showed a subtly-woven pattern running through its threads,  brushed through the leaf-tops of tender new growth, gathering glistening  beads of freshly-fallen dew.

So quietly did this person approach that a little Orc, crouching in a moss-lined depression and with his thoughts on other, sundry matters, did not notice the tall figure until he was nearly upon him.  Up went the Orc, shooting out from almost under the tall one’s feet, like a partridge breaking from a covey.  

“Save us an’ ‘elp us all!” he cried, as bolting from his hidey-hole between the hazel bushes, the startled Orc began running pell-mell down the slope, screeching something about ‘the light of the cold and terrible stars that was shinin’ in ‘is cruel eyes’ as he went.

The lofty, cruel-eyed figure clumped over to the hollow where the little Orc had been sitting and bent down stiffly to retrieve a discarded item from among the tree-roots.  

“Oi, Maz!” he called after the fleeing figure. “Here!  Maz!  You’ve forgotten your kecks.”

“Shagrat!” the little Orc cried, blowing out a great puff of breath in relief.  Pausing in his panicky flight, he came to a stop some way further down the ravine.

“What d’you have to go walking so quiet for, like?” Maz demanded, as his companion approached.  “For a minute there, Shaggers, when first I seen you coming through them trees I could’a _sworn_ you was one of ‘em  – I fort for sure I was seein’ an - “ 

Shagrat, who was in fact also an Orc – and a large one - himself, sighed wearily through his teeth.   He’d been walking carefully mainly because he had to, on account of having a gammy leg.   He handed Maz the grubby pair of breeches he’d picked up for him.  “One of them _what_.”

It was slowly dawning on Maz that the issue of who – or rather what sort of a person – he thought he’d glimpsed coming through the trees might well be construed as a mortal insult to an Orc like Shagrat. 

“Oh – nothing, nothing,” he muttered shiftily.   Then perking up a bit he asked:  “Ludlow not wiv’ you then?”

Shagrat grunted.  Through a recent series of misadventures, the Hobbit to whom Maz was referring had come to be something of a constant – if unlikely – companion of his.

“Says he’s not one for late nights,” he said.  “What about you?”

 “I ‘eard a pair of ringnecks ‘ad flown the gamekeeper’s coop,” the little Orc replied quickly.   “An’  I found a likely-looking nest halfway down the ‘ill the other day.  Hen should be sitting on ‘er clutch by now.  Wanna come see?”

“As it happens I –  might be heading down that way myself,” Shagrat said.  “I suppose I could come with you some of the way.”

The two Orcs made their way along in silence for a while; Maz, his companion noted, picking his way through the new swathes of plant growth quite as carefully as he himself had been earlier.

For the greater portion of life – until a year or two ago, actually - Shagrat had been a serving Officer in the Black Army of Mordor; a commander of other Orcs as well as larger Uruk-hai of his own type.   This had been a difficult role; a wholly un-relished task that had left him with the prickliest of natures, combined with almost zero tolerance for the company of his fellow Orcs.  And yet on that cool spring evening in the glowing dusk, Maz and Shagrat ambled down through the perfumed wood peacefully enough, in what very nearly counted as being a genuine, companionable silence.  

Maz gave the big Uruk a sideways glance.  As they were stepping along Shagrat, with an oddly  absent-minded expression on his face, was humming through his teeth, droning out a melody-free tune – almost certainly without being aware that he was doing it.   

“It’s funny you know, these days.   Wiv’ us being outdoors so much all the time and that,” Maz began. 

Shagrat stared at him, apparently nonplussed.  “What d’you mean ‘these days’?” he asked.  “We used to get sent out in all weathers the whole ruddy time, before.”

“Yeah, but it was always running off on some jaunt on ‘ _orders_ ’ an’ wiv’ a whip at yer’ back.  Do-or-die stuff.  Everything was always so dead serious, then, weren’t it?”

Marching out on manoeuvres, or raiding parties and looting.  Thinking about his life as it had been under the control of his dark superiors in Mordor, Shagrat could only answer - “I suppose it was, at that.” 

“And then,” Maz went on, warming to his subject, “even when you _was_ out you’d be on fer constantly getting it in the neck from some bloody-minded jobsworth Kapitan-type.”

Shagrat, who as an Orcish commander had more or less been a walking definition of the phrase  ‘bloody-minded  Kapitan-type’, scowled at him.

“No offence intended, I’m sure,” Maz added quickly.

“Thing is,” he went on after a minute, “before, I used to tromp all over the green, growing things – squash ‘em flat - just for the ‘eck of it.   Even if it didn’t have stingers, and weren’t prickly, an’ – an’ even if it weren’t really in me way.”

“There wasn’t a lot green, or growing that I ever saw down on Mordor Plain,” Shagrat replied, “but I suppose I know what you mean.  Used to go out of my way to do it, too.”

The two Orcs had reached the halfway point of the hillside by now.  They were finding that the further down the valley they went, the further the new season had progressed and at this level, spring was already well underway.  Here the soft, fern-like fronds of cow parsley were already covering the sides of the path with thick green growth, and taller stands of Jack-by-the-hedge –

-  also known as ‘hedge garlic’ and called ‘poor man’s mustard’  by the country-folk round these parts due to the rather acrid flavour of its technically, edible leaves (noted Shagrat, all without properly registering the thought that it was pretty unlikely that he could  possibly know any of this)

 - growing fine and lush by side of the watercourse, with their starry heads of bright, white flowers, were knee-high already.  Surreptitiously Shagrat slipped off one of his heavy gauntlets and reached out with his nearest hand so that his fingertips would just brush lightly through the stiff, slightly sticky flower-spikes as he walked.  He drew in a deep lungful of the sweet, scented evening air, and sighed out happily.

After a while he considered Maz for a moment.  Then, clearing his throat he said, much in the manner of somebody making an unwarranted admission - “although – between you and me, a lot of that tramping down the vegetation I did was –“

“Just showin’ off?”

“Well - all right, yes.  That, too.  But partly it was because I – well, I sort of liked the smell.”

The little Orc was nodding enthusiastically.  “Me an’ all!” he said.  “D’you know what I woz doin’, in the ‘azel bushes afore you came?”

Actually, Shagrat hadn’t quite liked to think.   “Searching for your britches?” he suggested faintly.

At that timely moment there came a loud rustling and cracking of branches from somewhere close by.   Shortly after that a third Orc stepped out from a thorny thicket into Maz and Shagrat’s path, where he waited a little way ahead of them.

“Wot,” the new Orc’s sarcastic voice called back to them, “did you say you was looking for in Maz’s kecks, Shagrat, mate?  You wanna watch yourself, Maz.  He’ll be up to ‘is old tricks in a minute, given ‘arf a chance.  They didn’t use to call ‘im ‘Cap’n Shag-anything-wot-moves’ for nuffink.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

This third party would be Azof, a black Uruk of Mordor, whom Shagrat had known slightly of old.   Though shorter than average, he was extremely stocky; nearly as broad across the shoulders as he was tall.  His yellow eyes slanted above high cheekbones in a cruel, angular face and most unusually for an Orc he seemed to boast some development of proper facial hair: he sported a thin black stripe of  beard all along his jaw-bone – in a delicately-drawn line so narrow,  carefully-trimmed and also (it has to be said), at such variance to the colour of the rest of the hair on his head that Shagrat often suspected he had to have been secretly augmenting it, by use of pen and ink.  

In Azof the general Orcish fondness for making trouble for its own sake was developed to an especially high degree, and for some reason he had always had a particular axe to grind against Shagrat.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you out on your lonsesome tonight, Shaggers,” he opened, his tone nasty.  “Where’s your missus gotten to then, eh?”

“Ludlow’s back at camp,” Maz put in helpfully.

“I wasn’t talkin’ about our dear little sawn-off, half-pint Hobbit runt,” Azof said.  And then addressing Shagrat -  “I fort The Fairy Princess was honouring us wiv’ a visit.  And everybody knows whenever that plonker turns up, you two goes about practically joined at the ‘ip for the duration.”  

Though it would stretch anyone’s credulity quite a bit, the fact was that Prince Faramir of Ithilien and – of all people – the Uruk Shagrat, had been enjoying and on-again but thankfully, mostly off-again love affair for quite a number of years at this point, and it was none other than Faramir himself who was the ‘missus’ of Shagrat’s to whom Azof was currently referring.  The previous day Faramir had arrived on one of his rather frequent visits to see his awful Urukish paramour – only to walk into yet another heated dispute between the recently-established mountain colony of Orcs and the locals already resident in the surrounding region, who - quite understandably - didn’t want creatures of Shagrat’s ilk anywhere near them.  At that moment Faramir was no doubt utilising his (formidable) skills in polite-speaking and diplomacy to help calm the volatile situation; a fact that Azof, whose lax attitudes to notions of the personal ownership of property had engendered much of the trouble in the first place, couldn’t possibly have failed to be aware of.        

“Not getting bored wiv’ you already, is ‘ee, Shaggers?” Azof went on, doing his level best to needle the other Uruk.   “If you’d only asked me, I could’ve told you I’d seen this coming.”  And then, when that failed to get a response -  “I reckon you surrendered your virtue to that boy far too quickly, Shagrat, an’ that’s the long and short of it.”     

Shagrat hunched his shoulders and clenched and unclenched his right hand repeatedly as he thought about the pleasant evening he might have been spending with his sweetheart, instead of standing about arguing with berks like Azof, had the other Orc’s antics not thrown such a monumental spanner in the works.  In dealing with Azof however, the key point to remember was to never let the bugger know he was succeeding in getting to you.

“Should’ve been a bit more careful about the guarding of your ‘chaste treasure’, shouldn’t you, Shaggers?  Loverboy will think you’re easy, now.”

“Leave the Captain alone, Azof,” an even larger Uruk, who had been on the far side of the narrow strip of woodland put in mildly, as he stepped closer to the little group.  This was Rukush, surviving remnant of a one-time wizard’s army from the north.  Rukush  was an even-tempered fellow, who possessed what in Orcish terms was such an unusually pleasant nature that it would certainly have turned out to be a grave handicap for him, if he hadn’t been saved by the end of the war. 

“I think it’s sweet!” Rukush said.

Shagrat glanced sidelong at him, convinced as usual that he was trying to take a rise out him – but also as usual, saw that Rukush was just being Rukush.

“You wot?” Azof was scoffing, his eyebrows arched in mock incredulity.  “You fink it’s sweet, do you, the way our glorious leader’s come down’ter being nuffink better’n a little lapdog, always running after Queen Fairy-mir?”

“I think it’s sweet the way the two of them are so devoted,” Rukush elaborated.  “You can see ‘em always holding hands and that when they think no-one’s looking.”

Shagrat, his calm mood by now no more than a distant memory, was almost beside himself with irritation.  He could take Azof’s mockery in his stride easily enough, but this clap-trap the other Uruk was spouting!  He heartily wished that Rukush would please, just stop talking about this.

“He’s gone down to the village to pay the farmer for those cows you ate, all right, Azof?” Shagrat barked out, knowing even before he’d uttered his words that Azof wouldn’t let that be the end of it.

Azof guffawed.  “What a plonker!  S’pose that’s ‘lurve’ for you though, innit?”

“I still think it’s nice to have someone special,” Rukush insisted. 

“Ooooo!  Sounds like we might be speakin’ from personal h’experience!” crowed Azof.  “You’re never telling me you’ve got ‘someone special’ too, then, are you Rukush?”

“Well –“ the other Uruk broke off, before continuing bashfully -  “I was going to meet this girl, tonight.”

 “Now, where are you going to find a ‘uman to get with you?”  Maz demanded.  “They all hate Orcs!  An’ that goes double for the ol’ misery-guts ones round ‘ere!”

“She’s not from round here though is she!” Rukush countered, “she’s from the travelling folk.  They’ve come an’ camped in the bottom of the next valley down the ridge.  And they don’t seem to mind us near so much as the other people here do.” 

“You don’t know nothink about it,” Azof announced slyly, “because I’ve been seeing  one of them farmers’ wives from down the valley meself.”

“You’re going steady with one of the women from the village?” Rukush exclaimed, astonished.

Azof looked blank.  “Eh?”

“Stepping out with her, I mean.  You’re not really, though, are you Azof?” 

“No, I’ve been _seeing_ her - watching her, I said,” Azof repeated.  “It’s not every night, but she has a sponge-bath most every other evening before she turns in.  Never shuts ‘er curtains neither.  An’ you can see the bleedin’ lot!”

Maz gasped.  “What’s she like?” he asked eagerly, hopping from foot to foot.

Azof shrugged.  “She’s nice enough. Bit older, mind you though.”

Maz shook his head impatiently.  “No!  I mean – what’s she _like_?  ‘Ave you seen her ‘jubblies’?”

“Yes, Maz,” Azof replied, “and like I said, she’s no spring chicken - but her bazooms  are still bloomin’ gorgeous  -  and she always soaps up a right good lather over ‘em  too.”

“What about ‘er bum?”

“Yup, an’ it’s a good big ‘un.  Big, smooth buttocks like - ” the block-shaped Uruk broke off, thinking for a minute.  “Like teacakes.  No – cos’ they’re too lovely an’ white.  White and soft - like...like floury baps, like.”

“ _Teacakes_?” Rukush echoed.  “Floury _baps_?  Been in many bakers’ shops have you, Azof?”

“I ’ave travelled, an’ seen ovver places, ain’t I?” Azof replied defensively. 

“But can you see –“ said Maz, who still hadn’t let go of the original subject, dropping his voice nervously – “have you ever seen her _minge_?”

“Course I have,” Azof said, resuming his suave manner.  “Told you, didn’I Maz – I’ve clocked the blinkin’ lot!” 

“Can I come an’ see her with you some night then too, Azof?” Maz asked eagerly.  The little Orc was practically salivating.

“No, Maz,” Azof told Maz, with a gruff sort of proprietorial  /stern tone,  oddly out of character for him (Shagrat noted) as in general the fellow was such an awful blinkin’ show-off - “you bleedin’ well cannot.”

By this time Shagrat, who was after all nominally in charge of this Orcish rabble, had heard more than enough.   “Now then Azof,” he growled, “you’re not going to be seeing this farming person again either.   I’m not having you stirring up more trouble with the country folk in these parts – and especially not now when we’ve barely gotten over the last lot!  You know they’re not happy we’re here to begin with.”

“You said the Queen of the Fairies ‘ad come to sort all that out for us!”

“That’s as maybe!” Shagrat yelled, “but the way you’re carrying on’s only going to make things worse, isn’t it!”

This was quite the understatement.  Having secured part-ownership rights to a tract of otherwise desolate mountainside on a technicality, Shagrat was finding that in practice his occupation of this conveniently isolated piece of land (as a sitting tenant with a few of his fellow-Orcs, plus one itinerant Hobbit thrown in) was turning out to have all sorts of unlooked-for ramifications.  Their nearest neighbours  – together with most of the local district, in fact – were all up in  arms about the situation, and that these people had not (yet) come together as one to unite against their common Orcish enemy, was only due to the general lawlessness of the upland region – together with the deep-seated clannish character of its inhabitants, most of whom were already embroiled in various complicated inter-familial disputes and squabbles over all sorts of sundry matters  (many of these being epic, ongoing quarrels of centuries’ duration)  of their own.  

It was important in the light of all this for the Orcs, if they were ever to successfully establish themselves, to avoid sticking their heads up above the metaphorical parapet – a point which Azof, with his livestock-poaching antics, and now, peeping-Tom-foolery, needed to be reminded of now and again.  Shagrat delivered him of a short, sharp, dressing-down, accordingly.

 “But what about him and his Pikey bint!” Azof exploded, pointing a shaking finger at Rukush.

“What’re you even bringing me into this for?” The other Uruk was outraged.

“That’s different,” Shagrat said firmly.  “Because Rukush’s Gyppoe friend – “

“’Not ‘Pikeys’.  And we don’t say ‘Gyppoes’ neither.  It’s ‘Gypsy travellers’,” Rukush put in.

The others turned to stare at him.

“Gyppoes prefers to be called ‘Gypsy travellers’,” Rukush explained.   “When you say ’Pikeys’ it has –it’s got all sorts of - “ he broke off, apparently searching for some appropriate means of expressing himself.

“Negative connotations?” suggested Shagrat after a minute.

“Oh, lah-di-dah!  ‘anging about wiv royalty, an’ h’ain’t we gettin’ verbose!” crowed Azof.  “Anyway it don’t make no difference whatc’her call ‘em.  Gyppoes is still a load of light-fingered, clothes-peg-selling, wagon-dwelling horse-thieves.”

Shagrat rolled his eye.  “But at least Ruskush’s Gypsy traveller friend _knows_ she’s stepping out with him!”

“ _How_ is that different?” demanded Azof.

“’Cause of he’s not spying on her through her window, when she’s alone at night, is he!”

“Come on, Azof,” Maz said, shivering. “All that ‘anging about!  Even you’d ‘ave to admit that is a bit on the creepy side, is’nit?”

“I’m not spying on her,” Azof retorted.  “She knows all about it.  Doesn’t begin taking her bath till I get there, most times.  She very bloomin’ well makes sure I’m there before she even gets started!”

The other Orcs looked at one another, perplexed.

“Must be she’s h’exhibitionist!” Maz hissed.

“And you’re sure you’re not getting hold of the wrong end of the stick ‘bout all this, are you Azof?” Rukush ventured at last.

“I ain’t!  Threw a proper strop one night the other week after I got ‘eld up and never made it over to her gaff, didn’t she!  And next time I went, wouldn’t take her kit off for _ages_.   I told you – she leaves the curtains, big, ‘eavy shutters like they’ve all got an’ everythink open, specially.”

It was apparent that Azof was warming to his subject because he carried on excitedly:  “First time I went down to her’s, right, I started off ‘iding in the bushes in ‘er back yard, right, ‘cause you can get a good view an’ you’re kinda under cover too.   But after a while she clocks me ‘anging about in there, doesn’t she, an’ -”

“What sort of bushes were they?” Maz asked.  

“Wot? – Oh – they was, er - some sort of cultivated variety of the wild ‘azel nut, I think.  Anyway, this woman, Julienne ‘er name is, right - ”

“Hazel bushes!” interrupted Maz.  “Oh, but they’re brilliant!  The way the bark’s all shiny-smooth in winter – then it’s so pretty when the first leaves do come.  An’ in autumn you get ‘azel nuts!  Or cobnuts!”

“Or filberts!” Rukush put in.

“Eh?”

“Some people says ‘filberts’ instead of ‘hazelnuts’,” Rukush explained. “I quite like nut trees too.  Walnuts, ‘specially.”

“Walnuts!”  Maz nodded appreciatively.  “Yeah.  Walnuts ‘ave got lovely leaves ain’t they.  All soft and bronzy in spring, before they toughen up an’ go proper bright and green.  Nice!  And the whole plant smells so nice!  Strongly h’aromatic throughout.” 

He looked round the group for a moment with a decidedly shifty air, and then lowering his voice, asked Rukush hesitantly:  “Is... is that what yours’ has turned out to be, then?”

“Is that what Rukush’s _what_ has turned out to be?”  Azof scoffed, not quite convincingly.  “What’c’her on about now, eh, Maz?” 

There was an awkward moment of silence.

“Do _you_ know what these two are yammerin’ on about, Shagrat?” Azof demanded, turning to the older Uruk.

Shagrat sighed as he looked around the little group.  Perhaps it was about time for them to be getting these things out and in the open, at that. Because Maz might talk about his pheasant’s nest, and Azof and Rukush their respective ‘girlfriends’ as justification for why they were out and about that night; but it wasn’t even as if it was just the four of them who were affected.  The sweet draw of that soft, spring evening had been strongly felt by everyone - to the extent that the Orcs’ camp had been nearly deserted by the time Shagrat himself had left it.  

Looking Azof in the eye, Shagrat said quietly - “I reckon you know what he’s talking about as well as I do.  Otherwise I’m betting we wouldn’t be finding you, Azof, standing around making silly excuses for why you’re hanging about here, at night, in a wood.”

“Now, I’ve got as much right as anyone else –“ Azof began, blustering.

 “Is it walnut though, Rukush?” Maz whispered, ignoring him.  “I mean is walnut the tree wot ‘as... turned out to be the right one for you?”

 “Nah, I mean I like walnuts all right and everything,” replied Rukush, “but for me it is def’nitely the small-leaved lime!”

“Yes, to my eye it has got a somewhat more attractive growth habit than many of the larger-leaved varieties,” Maz commented, knowledgably.  “Foliage not quite so luxuriant of course - as you’d h’expect given the name - but I do like the look of them downward-arching branches, wot becomes apparent in the more mature specimens, in general.” 

Azof fairly goggled at him.  “Wait a minute!  Anyone thought to wonder _how_ does a pig-ignorant little twerp like Maz come to know all that?” he demanded.  “’I bet ‘ee couldn’ tell a bloomin’ lime tree from a cobnut from an ‘ole in the ground the other week!  Now he says ‘ee ‘likes the look of the downward-arching branches in general!’ Like ‘eck ‘ee does!  _Where_ is all this h’information coming from?  That’s what I want to know!”

“Oh.  Mine’s a bit like I’m hearing this voice,” Rukush answered helpfully.

“An’ this voice – comes from outside of yous, does it?”

“Oh, no!  It’s a voice I hear just in my head.”

Maz nodded.   “She’s a lady.”

“Yeah.  Dead ethereal – an’ awful well-spoken, too.  Mouth full of plums, that lady’s got.”

“An’ she knows _everythink_ you wanna know about plants, don’t she, Rukush?” Maz said seriously.

“Yeah, because it’s like she _made_ them,” the Uruk replied, shaking his head in wonder, “or something.  Actually I’m not too sure I understand that part. ”

“Satisfied with that, Azof?” barked Shagrat.  “Apparently some posh bird’s been telling them all about it.”

“’Earing a voice in yer ‘ead!” spluttered Azof, quivering with indignation, “takin’ account of a voice in yer ‘ead!  Listen to yerselves!  Think, for a minute.  Where, exactly, ‘as that sort of thing  gotten Orcs like us before?”

“Wind your neck in Azof!”  cried Rukush.  “This is nowhere near the same!”

“Ee’s right,” Maz put in, “this isn’t like when we were back” – and he whispered it low – “in _Mordor_.  It’s ‘elpful, this voice is!  It isn’t like it takes you over – an’ – an’ crushes you an’ drives where you don’t wanna go – _forcing_ you till there ain’t nothink left, like it’s some sort of – of -“ he stopped, and stood waving his claw vaguely, not sure how to finish.

“-  compulsion?” Shagrat concluded for him, eventually.

“That’s right!” Maz cried, defiantly.  “So you tell me, Azof, where’s the harm in that?”

Azof merely made a short lunging step towards him, and the little Orc, all his earlier bravado vanishing, scampered  back to cower beside Rukush.   Azof shook his head at the pair of them.

“It’s perverse, this carryin’ on with nut bushes and such is,” he muttered.

“Azof doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Rukush said, turning to console his smaller friend.  “He’s just narked ‘cause of we didn’t want to listen to his silly, grubby stories, isn’t he?  Look Maz, there’s some nice lime trees just on the edge there where this wood gets big and opens out an’ I’m going across there, in a minute.  You know, Maz, d’you – d’you want to come an’ see them with me?” 

“Nah, I’ll stop ‘ere with me ‘azel shrubbery, if it’s all the same to you, Rukush mate.”

The two Orcs were now grinning at one another ecstatically, as if engrossed in sharing some wonderful new secret.

“We shouldn’t even be speaking about this!” insisted Azof.  “Don’t’cher all remember how it was, before?  I’ve not forgotten, even if you lot ‘ave!  Trees an’ that ‘ave got long memories, is what we was told time an’ again in barracks.  And we was always learnt about the way they _hate_ Orc-folk like us!”

“But that doesn’t seem right, not here and now, anyways,”  Maz replied, sounding none too sure of himself.  “Happen – ‘appen these ones don’t?”  He turned to Rukush in for support.  “There’s no harm in it, surely?”

“And why would we ‘ave any call to think things ‘ud be any different here?” Azof sneered.

Rukush’s brow furrowed with effort as he made a valiant attempt to think things through.  This was always a slow and painful process for him, and a measure of the great importance he attached to Maz’s question was that he even bothered trying to answer it in the first place.   “All these old roads and bridges and what-not what you can see all over Gondor,” he began eventually, following several false starts.   “That stuff they say the Men from the West built.”*

“Tarkish h’infrastructure?” sneered Azof.  “Yeah, I’ve seen it an’ it’s rubbish.  What about it?”

“I mean I heard the Tarks here were builders back in the old days.  Workers of stone.”

“They were well known for it,” put in Shagrat, who of all of them had arguably had most first-hand experience of Tarkish skills in stone-masonry, as he had himself inhabited the Tower of Cirith Ungol, a building made entirely through their efforts, for far too many years.   

“Tarks was also well good at smithy-work.  Ship-building too,” Maz added.

Azof shrugged.  “I s’pose that’s all fair enough.  Don’t see what difference none of it makes though.”

 “What I’m saying is, you can’t build, in stone, or make roads – or do all them other things like Maz said – without, well – without felling a good few trees can you?  I saw it with that wizard when I lived up north,” Rukush explained.  “Had us lot slash and burn down _acres_ of the old forest he did, and the woods – well, I can tell you they wasn’t pleased by it.”

“The _woods_ wasn’t pleased by it?” Azof exclaimed.  “You see !  This is ‘xactly wot I’ve been saying all along!”

“We was attacked by a walking forest, once,” Rukush said slowly.  “They were trees, but they could walk, an’ talk.  I swear I saw it for myself, just after we lost the big battle.” 

“An’ this when you was still living up north?”

“Yeah,” Rukush nodded. “An’ it was ‘orrible.  So I dunno. Maybe Azof _has_ got a point, but what I’m getting at is something’s different here.  I remember how it was before, and the _feel_ of – just ain’t the same.  I dunno - maybe it’s because of these trees having been chopped before, back in ‘istory, could that be it  –?“

“Or maybe something’s different, now, about….us?” Maz suggested, very quietly.

“It could be that,” Rukush acknowledged, “I wouldn’t like to say, but it could, maybe.  But whatever is – behind it, it’s like the trees, an’ – an’ even the little greenstuff here, I don’t think it’s bothered if you’re a Man, or beast or – or even an Orc, not really.  Not so long as you – you know, you see it for what it is.  Really an’ properly _see_ it, I mean.”    He broke off, apparently exhausted by his efforts to explain himself.

“But. We. Is. Orcs!” roared Azof.  “Seein’ trees and liking plants?  Everybody knows we shouldn’t have no truck with that, because we don’t go in for all that namby-pamby sort of thing!”   

“Maybe we ‘ave just been mis-h’informed,” Maz said doggedly, “about what we does and doesn’t like.  Or - or even purposely misled.  I mean it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?“

“The Captain’ll know what’s for the best,” Ruskush announced after a moment.   Turning  to Shagrat he said stoutly:  “If he thinks it’s all right for us to keep on as we have been doing - I say it will be too.”

“Have you got a tree wot ‘is the proper one  for you too then, Shagrat?”  Maz breathed.  “Have you?”

 “Well, ’ave you or ‘aven’t you, Shaggers?” jeered Azof when the big Uruk didn’t reply.  “An’ if he has,” he told Maz and Rukush, airily, “chances are it’ll be something with a pretty flower-pattern on it, or growing in a pot – like tulips, or a little pansy-bush, I should think.”

There was a stiff moment’s silence.  The other Orcs waited expectantly. 

“Grey poplar,” said Shagrat in a tight voice, at last.

At this Azof positively roared and hooted with laughter.   “A tree wot only grows in the fertile loams of riverine floodplains!  And you livin’ halfway up to a bloomin’ mountain-top!  Oh, Shaggers!  You’ve been shafted again there all right, you poor bastard!  Them farmers down the valley‘ll shoot you full of holes soon as look at you, long before you even get near any grey poplars!”

“What about you, then, Azof?” Maz asked, bristling.  “Got one of your own too, ‘ave you?”

“It’s blackthorn,” Azof replied, sticking his chin out and changing his stance slightly, as if he was daring anyone to make something of it.

Maz was appalled.  “Blackthorn!” 

“Not even a proper tree, is it?” scowled Shagrat. 

“More of a thicket,” agreed Rukush.  “Blackthorn hasn’t really got what anyone’d call ‘a trunk’.”

“It’s as proper a tree as ‘azel is, in’t it?” yelled Azof defensively.  “All that bloomin’ ‘self-coppicing’ malarkey!”

“Still difficult to cuddle up to, mind, Azof,”  Maz said, recovering from his shock somewhat.  “It’s so - spiny.  An’ I ‘eard if you prick yourself, on the branches it’s got this ‘orrible, ‘orrible fungus -” 

“Oh, go an’ prick _your_ self!” Azof howled.   “It’s no bleedin’ surprise that Maz’d know all about ‘orrible funguses’!  He would, wouldn’t he, the dirty little bleeder!  We’ve much more chance of picking somethink catching off of _you_ , Maz, as off a blackthorn bush!  Or – or off your ‘orrid, manky old tregs!  What’d you go picking ‘em up for ‘im for, Shagrat?  You should’ve left ‘em lying where they was!  They’d ‘ave been better off buried in an unmarked grave at _midnight_ instead of you going and carrying ‘em about wiv’ you all over the place!”

Maz abroad in the countryside with his trousers on, rather than off, had generally seemed the lesser of two evils to Shagrat, and he said as much to Azof, who swore at him and looked as if he was about to start squaring up for a fight.

“No use taking it out on him,” said Rukush in a mild voice, stepping in almost nonchalantly, to put his great muscular bulk squarely between Azof the old Uruk Captain.  “It’s not Maz’s, and it’s not Shaggers’ fault you got landed with one of the duff ones, Azof.  I think it serves you right.”

Azof shot him a filthy look.  “Blackthorn’s better than stinkin’ _poplars_ at any rate!” he shouted back at them, as he proceeded to stomp off into the woods.  They heard his voice echoing back through the trees:  “an’ at least I can always make sloe gin!”

Shagrat watched him go with a baleful eye.  Then he shook himself and sighed.  “Right then,” he said, addressing the two remaining Orcs.  “Any other business?  No?  Then I’ll be bidding you both a good night.”

 

 

 

* not surprisingly, Tolkien did address this specific point, but as I understand it, reckoned something along the lines of – and of course I’m putting this into my own words - ‘the vegetation of Ithilien / Gondor wouldn’t have “minded” being cut down and used in building by the Men of the West, because what they were doing was well-intentioned.’  Gotcha!  Right.


	3. Gone fishing.

 

 

The quarter moon was long set, which made it well after midnight by Shagrat’s reckoning, as he continued on his way.  His progress down from the mountain had been slower than anticipated; he had aimed to arrive at the grove of poplar trees towards which he was heading several hours before sunrise, which would give him enough time for a fairly leisurely sojourn - although he’d planned to leave before the sun was up, preferring to travel in these regions under cover of darkness. 

The lowland his favoured trees were growing in was a decidedly pastoral setting; well populated by livestock farmers, and the floodplain itself was stocked with many domestic animals of various types.  The hedges, willow copses and water-meadows they grazed down on the plain offered very little cover, and the Orc had no wish to be caught in the open by some angry farm-hand or stockman.  He’d have to pick up his pace if he was to avoid this, but thinking he could still make it – there and back for a good run - Uruk jogged heavily on down the path.  There was no sound but the rhythmic scuff and thud of his boots on the rocky downhill slope for some time.    

One of the trickier parts of his journey lay, in fact, not far in front of him near the foot of the hillside.  Here, in a place where the woods narrowed and the trees grew more sparsely, was a village spanning both sides of the mountain path.  Despite an obvious lack of good building space, the stone houses there were surprisingly numerous, teetering on the edge of fabulous drop-offs on either side of a steep-sided forest ravine, and for some distance down from this point on the hillside, the path Shagrat was following was the only traversable route.  Just uphill of here, the stream running by the path was joined by a number of tributaries and increased in size to become a white-watered torrent.  This abundant water-source was used to wash fleeces sheared from the flocks grazing downstream, and a settlement of wool-workers, spinners and weavers had grown up around it.

At this time of night however, the weavers’ village was quiet.  There were still lamps lit in a few of the houses, signalling that perhaps some of their occupants remained awake, and here and there were warm squares of lamp-light shining through the trees.  But the cobbled main-street was deserted and even the village tavern was dark and had its shutters closed.  Shagrat was struck once again by a human peculiarity he’d often noted; granted, they might stay up late for the odd night or special occasion, but really, the creatures were very strictly diurnal in their habits.  Either way it worked as an advantage for him this night, and he passed through the middle of village and then down onto the wooded hillside beyond without incident.   

He had been stepping along quietly enough, he thought, when there came a flurry of movement and commotion a little way ahead of him, after which the Uruk was passed by one, then two or more people running silently past him through in the trees, hurtling by at break-neck speed.  He soon came to an open space on the riverbank.  The place was now deserted, but in their great rush to leave, whoever had been here had left their fishing net staked out at the water’s edge, together with a few other odds and ends of kit still lying about.  It looked as if he had stumbled upon a poachers’ night-time camp – perhaps even set up by the same band of ‘Gypsy travellers’ Rukush said he’d set out to visit. 

The Orc approached cautiously.  Their abandoned net was a long, narrow affair, lightly weighted at the bottom end and with a line of floats along the top – the type designed to be pulled through the water by hand rather than cast out from the riverbank.  And there seemed to be something heavy caught in it.  Shagrat hesitated for a moment – but after all, he’d made it past the weavers’ village without any trouble and this shouldn’t take much time.  His thoughts on a free meal of fish, the Orc began pulling in the slack.

The weight was surprising: far greater than he’d been expecting, but Shagrat hauled away hand over hand at the line, determinedly gathering the waterlogged mesh in a heap on the river bank – until, as he gave a final mighty pull, the contents of the far end of the net flopped in a streaming mass onto his feet.  The Orc exclaimed in surprise and then swore as he saw that there was someone tangled up in there; a young boy, and from the looks of his still, cold and white face, he must have been under the water for a time.  He didn’t seem to be breathing, and when Shagrat pressed his fingers momentarily to the lad’s neck, there was no sign of a pulse.  The Orc cut the body free with a few swift knife-strokes and heaved it further away from the riverbank, stepping over it carelessly as it lay on its back.  He was setting off on his way again when a thought occurred to him, and he turned round in his tracks.

One night long ago in Mordor, one of the squaddies from Shagrat’s company – a new recruit fresh down from the mountains, had drunk more wormwood-laced grog than was good for him, and taken it into his head to go cavorting about in the gantries high on the walls of the Tower.   Halfway to the top the full effects of the brew he’d been quaffing kicked in and the fellow passed out.  He keeled down arse over tip till a big water butt broke his fall - but by the time someone had climbed up there to get a rope round and haul him out, they might as well have saved themselves the bother as it seemed they’d gotten to him too late after all.  They’d all been standing round the motionless body – someone had their filleting-knife in hand already and Shagrat was thinking about divvying up the rest of the squaddie’s kit, in point of fact - when one of the young Orc’s mates, serving in one of the neighbouring companies, had come rushing up and flung himself over him, then started sort of blowing air into his mouth.  Shagrat could still remember watching as the drowned squaddie’s chest gently rose up and down - and up and down, as each breath from his mate made it rise then fall.  Eventually the group of on-looking Uruks’ lewd jeers and jibing had been replaced by a kind of quietly impressed silence as the half-drowned squaddie began to revive – and soon enough he coughed up a load of water, started breathing properly, and that was that.  At the time Shagrat had made a mental note to remember the episode in case of someday the novel technique coming in handy, but it had happened many years ago now, and he’d never had occasion to use it.

More out of curiosity than anything else, he tilted the lad’s head back, pinched his nose shut, and huffed a series of deep breaths into his mouth.  Nothing happened, and the Orc was thinking of trying a second round – when suddenly the youth began retching and choking, shivering violently as he started to draw in shallow, painful breaths.  He rolled onto his side as Shagrat jumped back.

In their haste to get away, the poachers had left a few odds and ends lying on the riverbank.  There was a number of dry hessian sacks and two or three shuttered oil-lamps, only one of them lit.  Carefully keeping his distance, Shagrat chucked a couple of the sacks over the lad’s trembling shoulders.  Then he opened the cover on the lighted lamp just the tiniest bit, allowing it to it illuminate a few inches all around, and put it on the ground nearby.  

He realized then that the youth’s companions had come back.  There were three of them, all of about the same age and none of them much more than half-grown, standing in a small, silent group, a short distance away under the trees. 

 “That’s our friend there,” the boldest one ventured, coming forwards a few steps.  “My best mate.  What were you doing – when you was leaning down on him like that before?  Is he – is he going to be all right?”

It was occurring to Shagrat that while he himself could make their faces out quite clearly, of course, in the dark they couldn’t see him properly as yet.  “If you’re such good ‘mates’,” he said in disgust, “how come you all upped and ran for it, eh?”

“We didn’t know he’d gone under, Mister,” another of the boys gulped, “honest!”

They were village youths, who had apparently been engaged in some illicit night-fishing; poaching, really, for the migratory sea-trout that were often found in the river at this time of year.  The half-drowned one – who, ironically, was credited with being the best swimmer of the group – had been holding the far end of their wade-net near the opposite bank of the river, while his friends took care of their portion, on land on the nearer side.   The lads’ lookout, having mistaken Shagrat for the water-bailiff who patrolled much of this part of the river, had panicked and lost his head completely at the Orc’s approach for this particular official had a reputation for dealing with poachers with quite unnecessary severity:

“he shoots them with his crossbow, Mister, no questions asked!  And he’s got a big fierce dog, too!” 

The boys had scattered into the woods, assuming that their friend had managed to get out of the water too, and had returned for him after they realized he’d failed to rejoin the group.

By now the lad who had been caught in the fishing net was trying to sit up, and encouraged by this the others moved in closer and began to cluster round him. 

“I can’t see a thing here,” one of them said.  “How about a bit more light?” 

“Hold on a minute – what about that water bailiff?” Shagrat began, knowing full well the effect that the sight of a full-grown Orc standing there large as life would be likely to have on them.   “You want to watch that, and - you’ll totally knacker your – your night vision.”

But the boy was already holding the dark lantern high in his hand and was sliding open the shutter on the side.  Light from the oil-lamp inside flamed full onto Shagrat, causing awful, leaping shadows to go dancing about his rough and weather-beaten face.  A moment of terrible silence ensued as the youngsters took in the Orc’s pointed ears – and claws and fangs; his missing eye.  Perhaps acting on the vain hope that removing this new horror from view might somehow improve their situation, the lad who had hold of the lantern flung it away from him, casting it violently onto the ground - where it went out.  Then they all began shouting incoherently as the mood of the gang of youngsters switched once again from hopeful gratitude to blind panic.  

“One of them Orcs from up the mountain’s got him!” 

“Saw it chewing on his _head_!”

“It’ll be after us, too!”

And finally - “Run!” -  as in a confusion of flapping garments and flailing limbs, the lads, scattering in all directions, ran off again into the cover of the trees.

The youth who’d been nearly drowned remained sitting in the same place on the ground, however, and it became clear that he had not been keeping up with recent events.  Water in his ears – or on the brain most probably, thought Shagrat, as he edged his way round him.

“Did Garvey say something about an Orc?” the boy piped up, in a quavering voice.

“I didn’t see one,” Shagrat replied truthfully.  “Maybe your friend’s got a vivid imagination, or something.”

“Then why did they all just run away and leave me!” the boy sobbed. “What sort of friends have they turned out to be?”

“You might well find they’ll have had their reasons,” Shagrat said abruptly.  “Look.  After what’s just – after what your friends think has just happened, I’m sure they’re going to be sending someone back to find – well, whatever’s left of you, at any rate.  Your –“ he broke off, not at all sure how these things were worked in practice.  

“My Dad’s going to kill me!” The boy wailed.

“You know, I bet he – your father – will be along now any minute,” Shagrat said, looking around doubtfully.  Big ugly Orc deep in the night woods standing over some abandoned kid – a injured, cowering, weeping, kid - well, that sounded bad even to Shagrat, and the situation was definitely open to all sorts of unfortunate interpretations, wasn’t it?  Already he imagined he could hear the sounds of angry townspeople coming for him, off in the forest.  The only thing for him to do was to get himself far away from this place, at once.

“Now where’re you going!”

The Uruk didn’t reply.  Then the lad began crying in earnest. 

 


	4. Nightmares and shadows.

 

 

It was none of his business, Shagrat told himself as he set off briskly on his way; but after going only a short distance, something -  and it might well have been something other than pity, or perhaps even the tiniest flicker of conscience; in any case, some barely-recognised form of emotion made him stop.

He could still hear the lad whimpering to himself, all alone in the dark and as he listened to it the sound began to stir up certain old memories of Shagrat’s, of traumatic events from a past he had never quite been able to put entirely out of mind.  The Orc shivered, and in spite of himself looked over his shoulder warily, being unable to quell a mounting sensation of fear and dread.

For Shagrat had not survived the fall of Mordor in full possession of all of his wits: his first encounter  with Faramir, many years before, had had a dark and brutal ending in which the Orc, having allowed his former prisoner to walk free, was sent to make payment for his actions in the terrible fortress of Barad-Dur.  The Uruk’s experiences there had unhinged him; isolated in the darkness and under the duress of near-constant, excruciating torment, hallucinations and other visions had started coming to him thick and fast.  

His head spinning with vertigo as he stood in the wood, Shagrat experienced a terribly familiar sense of disassociation: all those years ago, at first in the dungeons and afterwards, much more frequently, he had begun losing track of himself for increasingly prolonged periods – the duration of which even now, he could never be quite sure.  Having been delivered into the eager hands of one of his fellow Orcs following his initial imprisonment, Shagrat would reluctantly return to awareness and find himself engaging in all sorts of violent, degrading acts – or actually more often given the character of his personal warder, to find some form of viciously inventive humiliation being enacted upon him.  Under these circumstances by far the best option for Shagrat was simply to stay away - ‘out’ of his head - for as long as he could and consequently he’d gotten quite good at it  – even though this fact had greatly hampered his painful and slow recovery.   

Listening to himself whimpering that night in the dark of the woods, once again Shagrat’s occasionally-tenuous grip on reality faltered, and for a moment he genuinely wondered if after all he really was back in his dungeon, only conjuring up far-fetched dreams of a life after escape.  Of course he was aware that the faraway voice he was hearing was far too soft, as well as too high-pitched to be his own, but that sort of doubt was certainly no guarantee of veracity: on one occasion he remembered, thinking he’d been kept up half the night by the agonized shrieks and yells of the fellow chained next to him, he’d come round the next morning with his throat screamed raw, finding himself alone in his cell with the dawning realization that it was he, himself, who must have been making all of that embarrassing racket.

Some things were still second nature to an Orc like Shagrat, and he moved over to one of the larger trees by the side of the path and put his back against it.  That was better.  They – whoever ‘they’ might turn out to be - would only be able to come at him from one side, now.  Hunching his shoulders he dropped his head and bared his teeth, snarling out a challenge into the night at large, but there came no answer from the dark or the surrounding trees.  Panting slightly with the effort, Shagrat forced himself to think back over his current situation, and struggled to get a grip on himself.

The Orc thought he was currently standing alone at night in a forest, but throughout his incarceration he’d often believed himself to be hale and hearty, out of doors and free - when in fact the reality was that he was lying naked in some pit or prison cell, beaten and broken in captivity.  To combat these rising doubts Shagrat tried thinking for a moment about his lover Faramir, and his sweet acceptance of him.  

Unfortunately this only made things worse; no question about it, because the greater portion of Shagrat’s fevered imaginings in his dungeon – the earliest ones, at least - had all involved Faramir sweetly accepting him.  This was in stark contrast to the tone of their last meeting, during which the young Gondorian had railed at him, bitterly accusing the heart-broken Orc of having taken despicable advantage of Faramir’s youth and inexperience, exploiting their hostage /captor relationship in the most base and disgraceful manner, acting only towards the gratification of his own vile ends.   Actually Shagrat, in the privacy of his own thoughts, could all-too easily understand why his erstwhile prisoner might have felt like this: that he might have dreamt up a (for some reason, somewhat older-looking version) of the Faramir he’d known and that the proud young man was now willingly associating with an Orc - and coming to see Shagrat on rather frequent visits, if you please!  Well obviously that was all so fantastic as to be beyond ridiculous.  The Uruk passed a trembling hand across his face, dashing away the beads of cold sweat that were gathering on his brow.  Whilst there was not yet much to go on, on balance the odds that he was tangled in some sort of bizarrely intricate lucid dream seemed definitely on the increase.

After slamming his fist – followed by the back of his skull, with painful force – back against the tree behind him in the attempt to wrench his thoughts away from a distractingly compelling, if patently false ‘memory’ of this older version of Faramir, slap bang in the middle of making love to him –

Faramir half-naked, with his fair hair falling in his eyes was sweating, and the pale, smooth skin of his shoulders and flanks seemed almost to glow in the soft light from the candles that lit the bower or couch they were lying upon.  Leaning over Shagrat, who was resting close beside him, he grinned down in anticipation and began softly kissing his mouth; whispered his name and kept kissing and caressing him as he closed his hand around the Orc’s upstanding cock -

Shagrat shook his head violently to rid himself of this painfully vivid delusion of mutual pleasure shared, for it threatened to overwhelm him with (amongst other things) its breath-taking level of attention to detail: he imagined he could recollect everything – from each nuance of sensation as Faramir’s hands moved over his body, to the sweet scent of his lover’s arousal and the sound of his ragged gasps of ecstasy – the groans of pleasure - in his throat.  He thought he could even remember the feel of the rich fabric covering the bolster-pillow on which he was resting his head -   

‘Velvet cushions!’ the Orc thought a little hysterically, half convinced by now that he really had begun to lose his mind.  Gritting his teeth, he did his best to force himself to concentrate upon the problem in hand, automatically performing a swift weapons stock-take:  he felt for both his swords and his various daggers and then for the smaller hunting-knife he kept hidden in his boot.  He was searching in the pocket of his tunic for a set of knuckle-dusters that sometimes came in handy when his fingers brushed across a stubby, soft and furry item.  Blinking in confusion he took it out and looked at it and then thought, as clearly as if he was really seeing it in front of him, of the round and ruddy-coloured face of the fellow who’d given it him.  This was a real person, a Hobbit, whose name was  – and for some reason Shagrat had no doubts whatever about this - Ludlow Pennycress.

*******

“It’s my lucky rabbit’s foot,” Ludlow had explained to him, much earlier that day.  

“Lucky rabbit’s foot?” Shagrat repeated dubiously.  “What?”

“You carry it with you, for luck.  It’s served me very well in the past, you know!”

They had been sitting together by the fire in the mouth of the large and roomy cave (dry all the way to the back, and with not bad clearance-height in the middle; Shagrat could even stand properly upright in parts) that he and the Uruk were sharing up in the Orcs’ hideaway in the mountains –

“Watch your back in there, won’t’c’her ‘arf pint,” Azof had hooted, on first hearing about this strictly platonic living arrangement, “ovver’wise you might wake up some night an’ find our fearless leader is ‘ploughin’ his lonely furrow’ in you from behind!” he mimed a brief series of lewd lower-body movements, thrusting with his hips.  “By which I mean you’ll find he’s shagging you!  Hur-hur-hur –“

“Ignore him, Shagrat,” Ludlow tutted, and then yelling over to the other Orc:  “Oi!  Azof!  We all think – what is it again, Shagrat?”

“- steaming great useless berk,” the Uruk muttered under his breath, deliberately selecting the mildest selection of epithets he might have thought of applying to Azof, for he was beginning to have some serious concerns about the bad influence that he and his compatriots were having on their resident Hobbit’s behaviour.

“You’re a great big ber-erk!” Ludlow called over to Azof, singing out the last words, in what sounded to Shagrat to be a reassuringly inoffensive manner.  “Well really!” he went on in his normal tone, “I don’t know why some people have to go out of their way to carry on like that!”

Ludlow had been using the last of the afternoon sunshine to finish sewing a hem onto one of Shagrat’s blankets, while the Orc (who was trying hard not to look at the fancy crewel-work designs that his little companion was embroidering along the freshly-turned edge) methodically sharpened the blades of his own personal arsenal.

“There!  Finished!”  Ludlow announced eventually, standing up to shake out the piece he’d been working on.  A quantity of dust and dander, as well as a number of long, coarse, crinkly strands that looked as if they must have come from the pelt of some strange and savage animal rose up in a small cloud from it.  The Orc watched out of the corner of his eye as these Warg-hairs, turning gently in updrafts of sunny evening breeze drifted slowly down and settled to the ground.  

Ludlow was shaking his head.  “Really, Shagrat, you should try and air these out sometimes.”  He indicated the new stitching on the blanket.  “Well then, what do you think?”

Shagrat put down his whetstone and stared in dismay at the oddly intricate repeating pattern Ludlow had made.  “It’s –“ he cast about for something encouraging to say, but appropriate words failed him.  “I thought you were only going to fix some of the big holes!  Just a quick patch-up job, you said.”

Ludlow beamed at him.  “I _knew_ you’d go for a nice skull-and-bones motif!“  He sat down again next to Shagrat and his manner suddenly became much more serious.

“Look,” the Hobbit said, “I can see you’ve already begun preparing all your – big swords and things, so I assume you still haven’t changed your mind about your plans for tonight.  In that case, I want you take this.”  And then he’d given the thoroughly perplexed Orc his rabbit foot.

 “I’d come with you myself,” the Hobbit explained apologetically, “you know, to look out for – and, well, to back you up, but I don’t think I should leave.   Not when they’re all so - little.  Just not now, you know!”

With shining eyes, he looked over towards a large, battered, wicker-work basket that was wedged tight beneath a rocky overhang in one of the low-ceilinged areas towards the back of the cave.  Out of the basket had squirmed a peculiar-looking young animal, nearly hairless and shaped, with its over-large barrel chest, something like a steroid-enhanced puppy.  Obviously only a few days old, there were already teeth sprouting in its protruding lower jaw and as the Hobbit picked it up, interrupting its onward wriggle towards the lighted cave-mouth, it opened its milky new-born’s eyes, fixed him in a cross-eyed glare, pulled back its little lips and snarled at him.  Ludlow clasped the horrible infant to his breast - thereby demonstrating against the odds that it had a face somebody other than its own mother could love - and carefully returned it to the dog-bed.  The larger version, its dam, which was nursing a number of similar-looking siblings, raised her head at Ludlow’s approach and gave her stub of a tail a couple of quick thumps against the bottom of the basket.  

The Uruk grunted.  Tiny soft and hairless helpless-looking new-born pink things, as he’d recently discovered, gave him the absolute willies, and he’d been more than happy to have Ludlow take charge of caring for the Warg mother and her new litter.      

“So anyway, if you must go down there later on, Shagrat, I think you ought to take it.”

“It’ll be fine,” Shagrat assured him gruffly, hoping the Hobbit would just leave the matter at that. “I won’t get in any trouble.  Really.”

“It’s not just the distance.  Or all the trouble with those country people and farmers and what-not,” Ludlow went on, pressing his little talisman into the Orc’s hand, “although that’s more than bad enough!  But down past that village where the wool-weavers live.  That old wood there – some people say it’s haunted!”

Shagrat just looked at him. 

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

And the Orc, shrugging his shoulders as he reluctantly pocketed Ludlow’s lucky charm, had told him not really.

*********

Standing there remembering all of this in the haunted wood, clinging to Ludlow’s rabbit foot as if his life depended on it, Shagrat - who as far as he knew, didn’t have an ounce of whimsy in him - couldn’t think of a single reason why he might having deluded himself into thinking he was friends with an imaginary – and slightly fussy - Hobbit.  Which meant – and he felt a physical release of tension at the prospect – that he was safe for the moment after all.   Or rather, safe in a relative sense, given that he was alone in unfamiliar territory with an in-all-probability dangerously hostile group of locals soon to be hunting after him; but considering the difficulties the Orc thought he might have been facing, mobs of angry locals could only ever count as extremely small potatoes indeed.  

Squaring his shoulders, he picked himself up and started back to the youths’ fishing camp.

 

 


	5. Swept away.

 

 

The boy from the river, showing a complete lack of initiative, was still waiting in the dark near the riverbank, exactly where the Orc had left him.  “I thought you’d gone!” he cried, at Shagrat’s approach.  “What were you doing back there, Mister?”

“Nothing,” Shagrat replied brusquely.

“Sounded like you were talking to yourself.  Or blubbering - “

“I wasn’t,” the Orc snarled.  “And as for blubbering, you can bloody well talk.”

“But I’m just a kid!“

“How many years have you?”

“I’ll be fourteen next June.”

Shagrat made a non-committal noise in his throat.  If he’d had to, he would have guessed substantially less than that.  “All right then.   Let’s start getting you back to - wherever it is you’re going to.  Think you can walk, yet?”

The lad shook his head.  Shagrat rolled his eye and ground his teeth.  _Of course_ he ruddy well couldn’t.  Without further preamble, he picked up the youth, bundling the covering of dry sacks and everything round him, and set off back towards the village.

The Orc stalked on in silence for a time, but the boy it seemed, wanted to talk.

“You’re wearing chainmail – and you’ve got on bits of armour and everything.  Are you - a warrior?”

“No,” Shagrat said shortly.  “But I suppose you could say I was - in the War.”

The boy gasped.  “A soldier of Gondor!”

The Uruk quickly told him it hadn’t been exactly like that.

“So you’re a travelling mercenary?”

“Nope.  Not one of those.”

“Then when did you join up?”

“I didn’t,” Shagrat replied, in a brisk voice.  “Got conscripted.  Probably when I wasn’t much older than you.”

“Before you were of age!” the boy exclaimed excitedly.  “What was _that_ like?”

Shagrat frowned for a moment.  He never thought about those days if he could help it.  “It was a long time ago and I don’t remember, not really,” he said at last, and this was quite true.  “It didn’t make much difference, because back then there weren’t many other options for – for persons of my sort.”  He sighed out heavily.  “There still aren’t.”

“But did you get to slay many Orcs?”

Shagrat bared his teeth, grinning mirthlessly into the dark.  “I suppose you could say I did for more than my fair share.  I got to finish off a fair good few, yes.”

The boy made an awestruck sort of ‘ooh’-ing noise.  “They say there’s some come to live out over in the mountains.  Everyone in town’s up in arms about it.  But I’ve never even _seen_ one.”

“You should count yourself lucky then, shouldn’t you?”

They carried on in silence for a while.  Then the boy said –

“Mister, have you got weapons, like proper weapons on you?  Like – maybe a sword?”

“I might have.  Why d’you want to know?”

“Can I – could I maybe have a go with it?”

It was on the tip of Shagrat’s tongue to tell him: not a chance, but then reconsidering, he handed him the smaller of the side-weapons that hung from his sword-belt, thinking: at least it might help shut him up.

“It’s really heavy!”  The boy said, sweeping the sword through the air with a great wobbling swipe in his enthusiasm.

The Orc winced.  “Careful you don’t cut yourself,” he advised, “and try and not drop it.”

On they went: the lad feinting and jabbing inexpertly with Shagrat’s side-arm, and the Orc, very much against his better judgement, unable to stop himself from issuing the occasional note on technique and form.

Soon enough they reached a slightly better-maintained section of path that indicated they were nearing the outer reaches of the weavers’ settlement.  The track before them, following the contours of the hillside, swept in a broad curve down the valley, and from here their route back up towards the village was visible for a quite a way.

“Give us that,” Shagrat told the boy, deftly reclaiming his weapon.  “And keep quiet a minute.”

Across the still night air, above the constant chattering sounds of the river tumbling down the nearby gorge, he thought he could hear the noise from a large party up on the road ahead.  A bank of ground-mist mixed with various watery vapours was rising up the valley, but after a moment Shagrat was able to make out a number of tiny, bright points of light – candles in the lanterns carried by the villagers – together with some larger, flaming fire-brands, away in the distance.  The Orc drew back into the shelter of the trees by the edge of the path.  He hadn’t expected them to be quite this quick off the mark.

“Your legs working yet?” he whispered.

“I think they are – well, sort of,” the boy replied.  And then, on noticing the approaching lights in the distance - “hey, is that someone coming from our village over there?”

“I expect so,” Shagrat replied.  “I shouldn’t think there’d be anyone else and about this time of night.”  Their lamps were noticeably brighter already.  That meant the villagers had to be approaching at quite a rate. 

“Then what’re we waiting for?”

“You go on,” the Orc told him.  “I’ll be stopping here.”

“Aren’t you coming any further?” the lad sounded disappointed.  “My Mum and Dad, you know, they’re kind of high-up in our village.  If you wanted work, you know - if you’re not going anywhere else - or a place to stay, I bet they could find you something  –“

Shagrat cut him short.  “They couldn’t.”  He waited a  moment, but the lad did not leave.  “Of you go then!” he encouraged.  “And be sure and give ‘em a good yell to say ’hello’ before you get near them so they’ll know it’s you.”

The boy seemed nonplussed.  Then he said - “my Dad’s going to want to thank you for bringing me back.  You should come and talk to him.”

“No, I shouldn’t.”

“My Mum’s a really good cook –“

“I don’t think your Mum and Dad,” Shagrat exclaimed in exasperation, “are going to want to have the likes of me round for dinner at their house!”

“Why’s that?”

Shagrat ignored the question.  The cluster of lights were already uncomfortably close.  “Go on, then – quickly!  he shoved the boy out into the centre of the path.  “Off you - trot.  Don’t fall in any more rivers.  And another thing – ”

“Yes?” the boy, dragging his feet and dawdling, half-turned in his tracks.  

“If it all starts kicking off in a minute, which it probably will, things are going to get – messy.  So don’t go looking back.  If I were you I definitely wouldn’t want to see what’s going to happen next.” 

“But what does that mean?” the youth protested, but Shagrat was already setting off as fast as he was able, resolutely heading back down the hill.

After a disturbingly small amount of time he heard a happy cry coming from the road behind, signalling the moment of the youth’s reunion with his friends and family.  An interval of relative silence was followed by angry shouting and indignant howls of rage: by that time Shagrat was already flat-out running, but even as he was trying to quicken his pace he registered, with a sinking feeling, the sound of hoof-beats on the road behind him.

The Orc hadn’t reckoned on pursuit from horseback, and knowing from bitter experience that he had no chance whatever of out-distancing a rider on his mount, he immediately veered off the path, dodging between the trees.  When he was still in the vicinity of the weavers’ village, the slight track or animal trail he was following petered out into nothing, and the ground began to slope steeply downhill.

It was hard going, through those woods.  The trees on the walls of the gorge grew tall and slender and were spaced far apart, but their open canopy allowed more light than usual to fall to the forest floor and an abundant under-storey of tangled bramble vine, stout ropes of hanging clematis, and other thorny bushes and spine-covered creepers had developed.  Time and again Shagrat had to use his sword to slash his way through the nigh-impenetrable thicket, the only consolation being that his pursuers from the village – whom he could still hear some way behind him - were meeting similar obstacles to their progress, too.  A greater difficulty was that the sides of the ravine were surfaced in many places with patches of loose scree; expanses of crumbling, flattish stones that were held only lightly in place by the network of roots and woody stems growing over them.  Stumbling onto one of these areas, in a part of the forest that as bad luck would have it was not well-clothed in undergrowth, the whole plane of rocks under Shagrat’s feet suddenly began to slip downwards: for only a moment was he able to keep his balance and then he was falling head over heels, bouncing off the accelerating rock-slide as it rushed him down the hill to the river running at the bottom of the gorge.            

As he tumbled towards the rushing waters, a snippet of information from years ago, back in basic training in Mordor returned to him.  On a black and frozen day in dead of winter, Shagrat, together with a motley selection of other new-recruits, lined up together on the edge of an ice-rimed cistern by an particularly sadistic drill-sergeant, had been kicked or pushed or shoved into its freezing depths one by one, in what turned out afterwards to be nothing more than a graphic demonstration of the point that when falling into cold water, the shock of immersion often made a person draw in his breath by reflex. 

So much for Orcish training methods in outdoor survival: the Uruk was concentrating most of his efforts on trying to avoid breathing in a double lungful of river when he belly-flopped into the water. 

Shagrat floundered for a moment and then sat up, finding to his relief that the river was actually rather shallow here.  It seemed as good an escape route as any - and was considerably less trouble than forcing a path through the woods.  The Orc splashed through knee-high water for a while, slipping and stumbling over algae-covered rocks, but the racket of his progress was at least covered by the noise of the river, and the sounds of pursuit from the townspeople seemed gradually to die away behind.  Concentrating more on keeping his footing than on looking where he was going, Shagrat didn’t realize for a moment that the depth of the water was steadily increasing, as was the strength of the current – until suddenly his feet were swept out from under him and he was picked up and carried by the weight of water behind him, bashing over and crashing painfully through a barrier of rocks that formed a low, step-like waterfall across the path of the river.  On the other side a dragging sensation caught him as the undertow at the foot of the weir started  to pull him down - but only for an instant; for then the main push of water took hold of him and pushed him forwards, twisting in the current.

The Orc was out of his depth here, and even if he had not been severely weighed down by water-logged clothes and armour as well as all the other accoutrements he was carrying, had never learned to swim.  But still in a sense he was fortunate, for the strength of the current here was so great that even as the waters would close over his head and he went under he was kept moving by it, and at times was able to push himself up off the weed-covered boulders of the riverbed, lunging towards the surface to grab a precious lungful or two of air.  Flailing inexpertly through the dark water, flung repeatedly onto river rocks and against other submerged objects, the Orc was carried far beyond the boundaries of the village.  After what seemed to Shagrat like an age of struggling against the turbulent, freezing river, the current smashed him into a kind of natural dam running part-way across it that had been thrown down the previous winter when the floodwaters were in full spate.  For a moment his position held: he scrabbled through woody debris frantically trying for a hand-hold - but the next instant felt the tangle of branches he was lodged against begin to break apart under his weight.  Before he was properly adrift however, he snagged his claws into a hefty piece of waterlogged timber from near the base of the barrier which floated back into the main stream alongside him, and after several attempts was able to haul himself head and shoulders clear onto this slippery, make-shift raft.  Riding low in the water, the bruised and battered Uruk clung to his tree-trunk like a drowned rat as the swirling river bore him away downstream.     

After a time the current slackened and Shagrat found he did not have to fight quite as strenuously to stay afloat.  Eventually, prying free fingers that were stiff from cold and painfully cramped with the effort of hanging on, he risked trying for a better position on the log.  With his face properly out of the water at last, the exhausted Orc slumped against his tree-trunk and closed his good eye for a moment.  The river, in fact, was carrying him - albeit at a slowish walking pace - in the direction he wanted to go, and the bobbing, rocking motion as he floated downstream was so very nearly pleasant that at times he nearly fell into a doze.

By now the river had widened and was beginning to meander through low-lying water meadows bordered by fine stands of old willows.  Here the watercourse started switching its direction from side to side time and again in a succession of great, sinuous loops.  The water was shallower in this region and the strength of the current greatly reduced.  Resting his feet for a moment on a submerged sandbar Shagrat heaved his upper body clear of the water, thinking he could recognise a group of familiar-looking shaggy-headed poplar trees away on the floodplain.  With the river now following its meandering, twisting course, the distance to be carried near to them by water was greater than it was on foot, and so the Orc waded out of the main stream and into the shallows, ploughing his way through swathes of flowering water-crowfoot, booted feet stirring up great clouds of fine sediment around him.  Pulling himself up by a platform of bristling orange-red willow-roots and out onto the riverbank he rested briefly on his back.   

The sun was not yet risen, but the sky was brightening and the meadows were already lit with a faint, cool clear light.  As yet the air retained a certain breathless quality, that as Shagrat had occasionally noted it quite often did during the changeover between darkness and break of day, a strange stillness that would last only until the first of the morning breezes began to blow.  The Orc had always considered this time of waiting stillness in the early, pre-dawn early hours as a signal for the various creatures that walked the night, to tell them that they should begin returning to their caves and dens and hidey-holes.  For those who lived in daylight however, that this was the part of the night when their dreams were at their deepest, when they would be most difficult to rouse from sleep.  Under cover of the last of the old night, Shagrat thought he should be safe from any further trouble with humans, for a while as yet at least.  

Picking himself up, the Orc set off towards the distant stand of trees.

  

 


	6. A merry morning meeting.

 

 

The low rising sun was throwing his long shadow ahead of him as Prince Faramir of Ithilien walked a leisurely path along the river margin, leading his horse along behind.  With his goal in sight ahead of him and not too far away, he tethered the docile beast to graze at a gate-post in the shade of a tall hedgerow, by the edge of a pasture full of plump white goats. 

As for the trees he was searching for, Faramir was only familiar with the general type.  Grey poplars, he knew, were most often found growing singly or in small groups on field boundaries, rather than in the company of other trees in woods, and while they could not grow properly in waterlogged soil, they did prefer the fertile meadows adjacent to watercourses.  Apart from this he had never thought to pay them much attention before.  

Looking more closely now, he saw that the bases of the poplar-trunks were dark and had a deeply fissured, almost corky appearance, which lent them an extremely - almost alarmingly - craggy character; but almost as soon as the upper limbs began to diverge from the main stem their appearance became quite different.  The large branches were in the main smooth and were coloured an unusual – and pleasant – pale greenish grey, being marked here and there with darker bands, each comprised of clusters of lightly raised, arrow-shaped points.  Even a slight breeze was enough to stir the shaggy clusters of leaves, which hung at the ends of the branches, into constant pattering motion and these leaves, coloured pale grey on the lower surface and dark, dusty green above, made the two-toned foliage stand out pale and surprisingly distinct; this type of tree could be seen from miles away across the open countryside.

And a full-grown grey poplar was as statuesque as it was massive: Faramir reckoned that the trees he was now looking at were among the largest he had ever seen.  Though clothed with great tousled bunches of leaves from the top of the crown right down to the ground, the trees retained a light and open aspect owing to how widely the main branches, each of enormous girth, were spaced apart.  The trees tended to bear foliage at their extremities and this, together with the spacing of the  branches left them with markedly open canopies.  From a distance they were a singularly impressive sight.

Faramir could understand the attraction.  And they were obviously an excellent match for Shagrat.    

Riding through the valley at daybreak, he had been told a strange tale as he passed the outskirts of a community of still-agitated weavers.  People were talking about an enormous mountain Orc running wild and savage that had been sighted near their village in the night, and even in spite of some of the fabulously inaccurate descriptions of the monster he’d been given (‘they say he was twice as tall as I am, Sir, and with fire in his eyes!’), Faramir had a fairly good idea of who this creature have might been.

And there a short way ahead of him, softly-lit against a backdrop of green-and-grey poplar leaves that fluttered in the sunlight, was Shagrat, making his way through a glade of fresh spring grass.  He stopped in the middle of the clearing, shed his cloak and turning to the left and right, carefully sniffed the morning air.  But the morning sun was in his eyes and Faramir still some way upwind of him; he appeared to notice nothing and his alert, wary pose visibly relaxed. 

As Faramir drew nearer Shagrat unfastened his greaves and wrist-plates and stepped out of his boots.  Then he began unbuckling his sword belt, which was supported by a pair of straps that ran diagonally from each shoulder to the opposite hip, crossing the middle of his chest.  Battle harness removed, he doffed his short-sleeved chainmail tunic, having difficulty with his left shoulder as the close-fitting, heavy material caught; and bending forwards he struggled for a moment, half in and half out of the battered old garment as he tried to take it off over his head.  As Shagrat stood up again, Faramir quietly stepped back into the cover provided by a line of young poplar saplings, quashing his quick impulse to help.

The Orc had worn armour of some sort continually, in Mordor, and Faramir knew very well how exposed and vulnerable he felt without it.  The fact was that Shagrat avoided taking off his outer garments wherever possible, and almost never willingly undressed.  Seeing him in an unguarded moment like this was a rare experience for the Prince, and for once Shagrat did seem relatively relaxed: after working his shoulder for a moment, the Orc straightened up slowly and stretched his back.  Now that he was not weighed down by battle-trappings his habitual stooping hunch was gone and he stood up much straighter, posture improved immensely.  It occurred to Faramir then, as it had sometimes done before, that if one did not look too closely at the details, the Uruk’s general shape could be said to be a fine one, indeed.  He had long legs, straight limbs and was strongly built, with a broad-shouldered, though not overtly muscular frame.  This underlying structure of Shagrat, unfortunately, was packaged in an outer envelope that most people would find decidedly off-putting: the Orc had mottled grey skin and a fearsome face with fang-like teeth, and he was covered, each and every inch of him, with ugly marks and burns and scars.  All in all it was a sad and ragged covering, and though it bore witness to its owner having endured countless years of abuse, of greater import was that this gruesome exterior was the badge of his Orcishness, and more than enough to condemn him for that.

There came to Faramir then, as he watched the lone Orc by the trees, another strange notion and he fancied he saw - as if overlying the broken face of Shagrat - a fleeting impression of the person he might have been if the circumstances of his life had followed a radically different course - and it was a savagely handsome, merry-looking fellow:  brown haired, clear of eye, and with a wide, expressive mouth.  Then, as quickly as it had come this vision or idea of Faramir’s was gone, and he was only looking at the scarred, wrecked  features of his Orc, with his familiar twisted nose and bitten lips and a look of wary watchfulness always in his eyes.  

The sight of the Uruk standing quietly in the sunlit clearing moved Faramir first to pity, then arousal, and he felt the familiar light-headedness coupled with a tightness in his groin that he often did when he was near to Shagrat, as the thought of him sent a swift rush of blood away from Faramir’s head.   

Meanwhile, the Orc had been picking up all the pieces of clothing, armour and weaponry he’d been carrying or wearing, and had methodically hung them one by one on a low branch that was catching the sun on the far side of the glade.  Returning to the middle of the clearing, he sat down carefully on a fallen tree trunk.  Crossing his legs, he rested his elbows on his knee, assuming something absurdly close to traditional pose of a shore-bound mermaid, and began to dry his hair.  The bright morning sunlight shone down through the widely-spaced poplar branches, back-lighting this pastoral scene - to unfortunate and gruesome effect.  Having twisted a long, ragged grey skein over one shoulder into a somewhat stringy hank, Shagrat was inexpertly trying to wring the moisture out from it.

At this point it finally occurred to the usually-observant Faramir (who in all fairness to him, had clearly been distracted by other pressing matters whilst watching the Orc) to wonder why Shagrat was absolutely sopping wet.  He stepped forwards into the clearing through the screen of poplar leaves, deliberately making noise to make his presence known. 

On seeing him Shagrat started violently where he was sitting, almost jumping to his feet. “Goldilocks!” he exclaimed in a warm voice, and there was a definite note of welcome in it.

Faramir smiled down at him.  “Don’t get up on my account,” he said.

**************

Faramir closed his eyes and thrust hard down into the Orc’s throat.  At first Shagrat choked and struggled with it a bit but soon accommodated him properly, as he always did.  Because you could say what you liked about higher-minded motivations, but for Faramir part of the joy of sex with Shagrat often involved something – pretty much exactly like this.  Trembling with the effort of containing himself, the Prince shook his head.  This wasn’t quite the tender reunion with the Uruk he’d been anticipating. 

“Don’t get up,” was all Faramir had said, and at that –  quick as a cloud shadow flitting over a field of summer grass – some subtle element of expression seemed to go out of the Orc’s face, and he was left regarding Faramir impassively, but with a wary look in his eye.   Then with an abrupt movement he’d reached for him – for the front fastening of his breeches in fact, and while it wasn’t wholly out of the ordinary for the Orc to suddenly proposition Faramir in this unexpected fashion, this time it had taken him by surprise and he had – so to speak – found himself going with the flow.

Looking down, he saw that Shagrat was in what had become to be a fairly familiar pose for him: hunkered down on his knees in front of Faramir, face jammed up between his legs and clutching hold of them for balance; being vigorously fucked, in short.  The Prince twisted his head to one side only to be met by the much same image - only this time played out in shadow-format, as the slanting sunbeams merrily lit their activities and projected them onto the riverbank.  It was an arresting tableau, no doubt  - but again, far from what he’d intended.  He seized a handful of the Orc’s wet hair – none too gently, then dragged his head back and held him away from his body for a while, to make sure he would make no effort to resume.

As usual when they’d been engaged in this sort of activity it took a moment for Shagrat to catch his breath and he hung his head, panting, at the Prince’s feet.  But Faramir hadn’t failed to note the flicker of apprehension that had passed over the Orc’s face as they disengaged from one another and now he saw Shagrat dart a swift, assessing look towards the branch on which he’d left his sword-belt.  The tree it was hanging from was clear across the wooded glade however, well beyond the kneeling Uruk’s capacity to reach - a fact Faramir could almost see Shagrat registering as he dropped his gaze, hunching his shoulders and quickly clenching his fist.  Shagrat’s left hand snaked out quietly, as he reached for a hefty fallen limb from a nearby tree.

Nettled by this reaction Faramir bowled him over onto his back directly, driving his knee into the Orc’s shoulder to knock the branch out of his grip.  Even given the element of surprise, it still took a couple of tries to make him let go.

In spite of himself Shagrat made a soft noise of dismay in his throat as he squinted up at Faramir, which turned into a cut-short yell as the Prince launched himself on top of him. 

“No, Faramir!” he cried.  “No -”

The Orc’s long arms grabbed for him, closing round his chest in what was more of a wrestling-grip than a proper embrace, and Faramir used his knees again to pin him down.

While his mouth was otherwise occupied earlier, Shagrat hadn’t had much chance to swallow, and a certain amount of moisture had run down his neck and was still wet on his chin.  Gathering what he could of it, Faramir quickly swiped some of it off him into his hand then added as much of his own saliva as he was able to muster.   The problem with Shagrat, he was thinking a little feverishly – possibly with all Orcs, he wouldn’t know – was that his privvy parts had been mauled about so much during his sexual encounters in the past that sometimes it was tricky to know how to handle those same parts here and now, in the present.   A little lubrication – well, that often helped, and he moved some of his weight off the Uruk’s hips, eagerly pulling down the waistband of his leggings and slipping his spit-slicked fingers in.

Shagrat was not noticeably hard as yet, but as Faramir squeezed and shifted his grip around him, his manipulations called up a rush of blood to the Orc’s member and he felt it swell and begin to stiffen properly in his hand.  Aching with arousal himself, the Prince was anticipating a quick completion for both of them, when he felt the Orc shove a hard, closed fist against his chest, pushing him firmly back. 

“Goldilocks, get off me,” Shagrat said in a breathless voice - not much more than a rattling rasp.

Faramir almost laughed out loud on noticing the tiny blade that Shagrat was now holding up between them in his shaking hand.

As Faramir was recognising his own clasp-knife – a little novelty piece that he habitually carried in his the pocket of his breeches, the Orc  jammed the sharp tip into the pulse-point at the angle of his jaw, not quite hard enough to break the skin, but using a disconcerting amount of pressure, nevertheless.     

 “Get off me, Goldilocks,” the Uruk said.  And Faramir realized then that he looked absolutely terrible – worse, that is, than usual: cold sweat was running off him and his naturally-haggard face was even more drawn and livid than it was in its ordinary state. Snarling lips drawn back over jagged teeth he was panting hard - in fear, Faramir realized to his consternation, for it was exactly the same look the Orc had worn towards him once before in Mordor, many years ago.  He drew himself smartly off Shagrat, who immediately rolled away from him, lifting himself up onto all fours and from there into a hunch-backed fighting stance, which he held lop-sided, on obviously unsteady legs.    

“Shagrat!  It’s all right, Shagrat!” Faramir assured him.  Approaching warily, showing open hands that he held carefully away from his sides, he was able to get close enough to reach over and clasp the Orc companionably on the shoulder.   Flinching slightly under it, the Uruk searched his face briefly, not meeting Faramir’s eyes.

Feeling  utterly at a loss as to know what to do next, a vague, hare-brained idea occurred to Faramir.   Letting go of him, he abruptly turned his back on the Uruk and paced a few slow steps forwards without turning round to look.  Then he sat on the ground with his back against the fallen tree trunk and waited.   This trick was also a signal to ‘follow me’ that was sometimes calming to skittish horses; the means of it working, as Faramir understood things, being related to the way it immediately removed from the animal’s field of view any perceived threat associated with a direct human gaze….and it also might have had something to do with the way that the eyes of a horse were placed on the sides, rather than at the front of the animal’s head.   Whilst Faramir had no idea how such – basically, equestrian - principles might apply to an over-wrought Orc, after a long, precarious moment, he was gratified to note Shagrat hesitantly approaching and wavering for a while on the cusp, before finally sitting down beside him.

 The Uruk cleared his throat.  “Was that you trying - _horse-whispering_ \- on me?”

In spite of himself Faramir snorted with amusement.  “And wherever did you become acquainted with horse-whispering as a general concept, Shagrat?”

“Heard one of the stable hands talking about it once, back at your place.  Fellow didn’t much rate it.  Said if you wanted to break a nag, all you had to do was jam the reins on its head and give it a good taste of your spurs, then stay on its back till it knackered itself out.  Better to let it know its place and who was boss right from the off - no point bothering with all that fannying about trying to be _friends_ with it, he said.”

“Well,” Faramir replied, making a mental note to get a full description of this unsympathetic character from Shagrat at some later date, “when it comes to the training of horses, and – actually, many other matters also, I think your stable hand and I would certainly have to agree to differ on that point.” 

“The other way works though, and not just on horses.  I can tell you that.”

“Really.  Is that so,” Faramir murmured. He put his arm round the Orc’s shoulders and pulled him nearer, until they were sitting side by side.  He spoke soothing, gentle words to him for a long time until at last, the Uruk seemed to calm down.  

“That softly-softly approach,” Shagrat said a little indistinctly, as he had his face pressed so close against Faramir’s neck.  “I should’ve known _you’d_ be all for it.”

The Prince smiled as he kept on stroking the Orc’s still-damp head of scraggy hair.  “I’ve seen for myself that sometimes it can produce remarkable results.”

 


	7. On an interlude in Minas Tirith.

 

Anticipating another adverse reaction, Faramir tightened his hold of his companion before he spoke again.  “Now we’re sitting here so happily Shagrat,” he began, “wouldn’t you agree that it’s a little early for such excesses of emotion as we’ve already enjoyed together on this fine morning?  Now, what on earth –“

\- here the Orc wrenched himself away from Faramir’s side and proceeded to pace agitatedly back and forth in front of him -

“Shagrat!  What on earth was going through your head when we were together...before?”

“You tell me!” the Uruk cried. “There I was, just having a quiet sit-down, minding my own business.  Then all of a sudden you turn up, prancing about and waggling your morning stiffy in my face – catching me all unawares.  What was I supposed to think?”

“I have never ‘pranced about’ in my life!” protested Faramir.  The colour rose to his cheeks.  “ And I most certainly did not have a ‘morning stiffy’ or anything like it, either!”

“Not half, you didn’t!”

“Honestly, Shagrat, sometimes I think you have a one-track mind.”

“I’m just speaking as I find,” the Orc replied stubbornly.  He continued in a reluctant voice -  “and - you’re not long back from a spell in the White City either.  You know you sometimes start out being a bit off with me after that.”

This seemed outrageously unfair to Faramir.  “But of all the people at Court,” he protested, “I’m the one who’s always on your side – the only one, if it comes to it!”

“I know that,” the Uruk sighed, “and I’m grateful to you Goldilocks, of course I am.  But it’s just last time you went, didn’t you get a right rollicking about – well, the state of things between you and me?”

Actually, the reaction to Faramir’s airily-delivered confirmation to the Court of Minas Tirith at large that all those scandalous rumours were quite true and that yes, he had indeed taken a frightful ex-of-Mordor Uruk into his bed, hadn’t been so much a ‘right rollicking’ as a group of his nearest and dearest standing around staring at him in a ghastly, stunned and embarrassed silence.  Though he’d done his best to brazen out the situation while it was happening, Faramir still felt hot and cold with mixed indignation and shame whenever he thought back over it.  Shame, if not exactly for the fact of his Orcish lover’s identity then at the time for having caught himself out: as for a split second following his revelation, he’d found himself wondering why he couldn’t have chosen a partner from, at the very least, some slightly less socially-unacceptable species.  

This truth was obviously something from which Faramir felt it would be better to shield Shagrat, and so he merely replied - “what does it matter if the idea of the two of us might take some people a bit of getting used to?  I’m sure most of them will come round to it sooner or later.”

 “Because that only took about twenty-odd years in your case, didn’t it?” the Orc muttered astutely.

“Be fair, Shagrat!  They’ve only just found out!”

The Uruk persevered.  “And then there was that ‘special chat’ you went to have with your new King.”

Faramir stared at him for a moment.  “Oh, you mean when I received instructions for my covert undercover assignment.  Yes, but I told you all about that.”

“Well I’ll tell you something Faramir, when it looked like you were really going to go for me back there for a minute, I couldn’t help thinking maybe you’d had a change of orders.  You told me yourself that could happen, didn’t you?”

****

It was evening in the Citadel of Minas Tirith, perhaps three months or so before.  At the close of that chilly winters day, the Mountains of Shadow were painted with a queer red light as they reflected the sky above them, still blazing in the afterglow of a frosty winter sunset.  The time was that quiet span of hours after the main dealings of the day were done, when the upper echelons of King Elessar’s court retired to their quarters in the city, and could attend to personal or private business.

His new Steward Faramir’s public declaration of deepest personal depravity earlier that day notwithstanding, King Elessar would certainly have preferred to try and keep the matter that was currently occupying him as something closed and private.  Word had come to him a while before of trouble of some sort, involving the good name of his chief and trusted counsellor in the city coupled – most incredibly – with that of an Orc.  The King always made a point of discouraging this kind of  scurrilous gossip no matter who its subject; but he knew that rumour-mongering in one form or another would almost always be a feature of life among the idle at court, and had paid little attention to the tales that the bolder of his courtiers had dared repeat to him.

A flying visit from an outraged Lady Eowyn and her contingent of Rohirrim, who confirmed that Faramir had indeed taken up with the notorious Uruk Shagrat – together, in fact, with a small company of other Orcs -  had made him change his mind about the scale of the potential problem.  And so earlier that day he had requested an urgent audience with his Steward, fresh on his return from a visit to the provinces.  Circumstances however had caused first the King, and then the Steward to be delayed and before he knew it he was watching the new Prince of Ithilien standing before the assembled court and expressing – with all apparent heart-felt sincerity – the depth of his feelings for this so-called Mordain ‘lover’.        

Faramir was already waiting for him in a chamber off the throne-room.  Standing by the tall windows, he was gazing out towards the mountains, and turned at once on hearing King Elessar’s approach.  The Steward stood up very straight as he turned to face his King.  

“I’ve lived a long life, Faramir,” King Ellesar began wearily, taking a seat in a low chairs beside him.  “And I understand that we cannot always choose to whom we give – or claim to give - our hearts.  But, my friend, when you talked openly today in court of your recent intrigue, with your companion -“

“The Orc,” Faramir said, in a serious voice.  With a quick shake of the head, he declined the seat the King was offering and remained standing awkwardly before him, his pose painfully self-conscious.

“Forgive me, but I do no more than my duty to ask, and would have you to tell me the degree of import you attach to this current entanglement.”   

“This is no mere entanglement, intrigue  – or dalliance!” Faramir cried, colouring up at once.  “For in its way it is an affair of many years’ standing.  I’ve known this Orc for longer than I’ve known anyone, almost – for far longer, indeed, than I have known you!”

The King sighed as he noted his Steward’s desperate manner: his agitation; the over-bright eyes.  Knowing Faramir’s character as he did he had feared it would turn out to be something along these lines.  “There’s no use in suggesting you forsake him then, I suppose.”

The young Steward’s expression grew grave.  “Do you mean to issue me an order?” he asked softly.

And for the first time King Elessar saw, in Faramir’s narrowed eyes and the stubborn set of his jaw, a definite family resemblance: he thought for a moment of the old Steward Denethor, and found himself forcibly reminded that for all his mild demeanour and pleasant manner, there was a core, or reserve, of something unshakeable in this new Steward and that Faramir, after all, was still his father’s son.  

“No, my friend,” he said.  “At most I meant perhaps to offer you advice.  It will be a difficult course, this path you’re thinking of setting your feet upon. ”

“I should tell you now,” stated Faramir grimly, “that I am resolved to it.”

“You’re quite certain?  There would still be time enough if you should wish to reconsider.”

He gave Faramir a period to reply, but the Steward didn’t waver.  His face pale now, his jaw set, he shook his head.

The King was regarding him with a long, contemplative look.  “The area, then, that you’ve thought to settle these creatures in,” he said at last, in a businesslike tone, “that, at least seems suitably remote.  Something of a disputed territory – of long standing, in fact, and all the better-chosen for it.  That was well done of you, Faramir.  Undoubtedly a bold decision –“

The Steward shook his head again, thrown off-balance.  “But did you not charge me, as warden of the Eastern Marches, with ridding Gondor of all traces of the Dark Lord’s domain?” he exclaimed.  “Instead of which, I’ve thrown my lot in with exactly the kind of creature I was sent to extirpate -”

“Your instructions, as I remember them, were to clear the outlying regions of this realm of evil remnants.  So you’d count him as an evil individual, this Orc of yours, would you?”

“I think perhaps - not entirely,” Faramir said.

 The King nodded.  “That you, Faramir, are willing to stand here and vouch for him tells me more than you might think.”

“But I’d assumed that after this episode,” the Steward confessed, all perplexed, “I would be sundered of my duties, publicly disgraced - “

“Not necessarily,” the King told him, “Though I won’t deny that opinion among my advisors is certainly divided, as of course it always will be wherever dealings with this type of creature are concerned.  But still, they do pose a special kind of problem, and it’s one that has ever weighed heavy upon my mind, although – until now – I will admit it’s something I have rarely sought to address.  On the other hand, there is a kind of precedent.”

He went on, explaining: “our relations with the Haradrim are always improving, and as you know, there have been several visits already from the emissaries of Dunland at court.  We’ve even brokered a peace – of sorts - with Umbar -” 

“Largely by assimilating it,” Faramir put in.

“Unavoidably, as I’d be the first to acknowledge,” the King replied, “but again, a kind of truce with those who formerly counted themselves among our enemies is officially underway.  And the fact remains that in Umbar, the people there – well you’ve seen them, Faramir, and it’s obvious that many of them – the Corsair men and women - are more than half-Goblin to begin with.   Do you begin to see the point I’m attempting to make to you?”

Unsure, but filled with a strange, leaping feeling of hope, Faramir asked him to go on.

“It would certainly be convenient for us, if their kind didn’t, or somehow suddenly ceased to exist.   But consider the alternative.  To set out on the deliberate extermination of an entire race, already wide-spread  – already being assimilated, as you put it – into human bloodlines up and down the land?  Whether we, personally, might wish to tolerate these creatures or not, that’s a strategy I would never, willingly, embark upon.”

The King leaned back in his seat.  “So, for the time being, we’ll allow your Orcish settlement to stay  the mountains, where it belongs.  But in addition to your other duties, I expect to have you regularly monitoring the situation up there.  Make no mistake, this is now your first priority.  Attend to it personally, and report anything out of the ordinary directly to me.  I take it that will fit in with your plans?”

The Steward nodded mutely, scarcely able to believe his ears.

“And I’ll speak plainly, Faramir,” the King continued, fixing his Steward with a beady look. “Though you won’t like to hear it, this arrangement we’ve agreed upon may not turn out to be a lasting one.  If there should be trouble of a serious type, or other issues we find we can’t resolve – we may have to come up with something else.”

“Which would involve –“

“I said I wouldn’t set out to exterminate your Orcs willingly.  It’s in your hands to ensure we won’t have recourse for any alternatives.”

Kneeling before his King, Faramir clasped his hands in gratitude, thanking him profusely; until at last the increasingly discomfited sovereign petitioned him to cease.

“Now, Faramir,” the King added as the Steward took his leave, “try and have a word with Master Gimli, before you set off on your travels again.  He thinks he’s heard talk about some fabulous source of mithril on that mountain, and has all sorts of elaborate plans for rebuilding the city gates – “ 


	8. Speaks to the trees.

 

“Well your great lord and master did say he’d change his mind if us lot didn’t toe the line, didn’t he?” Shagrat muttered ruefully.  “Honestly Goldilocks, trying to keep on top of that rabble, it’s like carrying water in a sieve - ”

“So if there had been - let’s call it a - change of plan, you thought I’d have wanted you to find out in that manner, did you?”

Shagrat rolled his eye.  “I wasn’t really thinking things through much, if you must know.  You caught me off my guard –“

“And if I had actually been sent back here to finish you off,” Faramir exclaimed, shaking his head,  “now, would I really have broken off in the middle of things to have you do what you started doing to me?”

“I don’t know,” Shagrat replied, sounding morose.  “I suppose you might’ve taken it into your head that you wanted to get a last hurrah off of me.  One for the road.  That sort of thing.”

“I’ll admit I was very glad to see you, this morning.  I’m not denying that.  It’s just I suppose I thought,” Faramir began slowly, “that things between us had been going rather well of late; that you and I had perhaps – at last - come to some kind of understanding.”

“So did I!” replied Shagrat earnestly, “but come on, Goldilocks, that’s when it usually all goes pear-shaped, doesn’t it?  About the time I start to think things might be going well!”

Faramir sighed.  Undeniably there was precedent – a number of precedents, in fact – for the Orc having assumed something like this.  “Nothing more than a misunderstanding, then,” he said, catching hold of the pacing Uruk’s hand.  “Let’s forget about it.”

The Orc’s shoulders sagged and he sat down again, hugging his knees at Faramir’s side.  “I’m sorry you know, for over-reacting.  Maybe I’m still a bit – wound up.  I - I suppose I had a funny sort of night.”

Faramir’s lips twitched.  “So I’ve been hearing.  Quite a kerfuffle you’ve been causing, in that village up the valley.  Half of them still want to chase after you with pitch-forks -”

Shagrat groaned and closed his eye.  “You see how it is whenever Orcs cross paths with these dratted yokel types?  They’re always jumping to conclusions -”

“And the other half – who seemed to be gaining ground around the time I left – seem to think you’re in line for some kind of civic award.  That lad you pulled out of the river -”

“Didn’t I just say?  How folk always go assuming the worst?  Straight up Faramir, I swear I never harmed a single hair on - what?”

“I know you didn’t.  As I would have even if the young man in question’s mother hadn’t insisted on pressing a hastily-assembled picnic hamper on me.  Intended for your hands, of course.”

“You’re joking!”

“I’m not,” Faramir said seriously.  “I have it on my horse.”

“How does she know you’ve got anything to do with me?”

“You cut a fairly distinctive figure, even if you didn’t know it, Shagrat.  And I understand that word about our – friendly association - may have spread.”

“Oh!”  The Orc looked at him sidelong for a moment.  “Well I’m sorry about that.” 

Faramir shrugged.  “I’m not.  Really, it’s all right.”

Shagrat visibly relaxed, once again.  “So, then, did I get any good stuff?”

“Some of it appeared to be in dark glass bottles, if that’s what you’re asking about.  Beer or spirits.  Something of the sort.”

“Still!  How did you know where to come to bring it me?”

Faramir shook his head.  “The Rangers of Ithilien – of whom I was chief for a good many years, in case you were forgetting, were rightly fabled for their skill in tracking.  An Ithilien Ranger, living constantly in the open, at one – as you might say - amongst the elements and with his expertise in field craft thus honed to an exceptionally high level, could even track the path of the warm night breeze from the traces it had left, or so it was said.”

Shagrat snorted.  “Found tracking the night breeze much use in general, did you?”

“I’m merely repeating what was said.”

“So you were able to follow me all the way down here,” Shagrat replied, sounding thoroughly unconvinced, “on account of all your very high levels of expertise in field craft.”

Faramir shrugged nonchalantly.

“Some of it over bare rock?  And in the dark?”

“Well to be honest, Shagrat,” Faramir began, “the way you and some of your cronies have been going, nipping off into the woods every other minute, gathering in reverent little groups under this tree or that, there’s getting to be quite a well-worn path –“

“Come off it Goldilocks!  I didn’t fall down in the last shower!” 

“I’m not saying I couldn’t have found you without extra assistance,” Faramir admitted, “but possibly in this instance field-craft may have had a little _less_ to do with it.”  

“Go on!”

“Since I had an inkling you might be heading down this way.” 

Sighing, Faramir got to his feet.  He stepped over to the nearest of the poplar trees and patted its rough-barked trunk.  “These are the ones you like best, aren’t they?” he asked Shagrat gently. 

“I don’t know,” the Orc replied, his tone guarded.  “They’re all right, I suppose.” 

“I don’t suppose there can be another stand of them as fine as this for – oh, quite some distance, can there?”

“I don’t know!” Shagrat repeated.  “I mean they’re just trees, aren’t they?  It’s not as if they’re anything – very special.”

“’Just trees?  Nothing very special?’ That’s not exactly the version I’ve been hearing about.”

Immediately guessing the source of this privileged information, the Uruk snarled - “that Hobbit should learn when to keep his trap shut!”

“I know that he and I have had our differences,” Faramir persevered, colouring up slightly, “but wherever you’re concerned, I really do think we see eye to eye, because your little Halfling friend genuinely seems to have your best interests at heart.  And he worries about you, you know.”

“Even so, though.  Running off blabbering to you, of all people!”

“But, Shagrat, I don’t think the poor fellow _knows_ anyone else.”

Faramir thought, briefly, of his promise to the King.  Stretching his legs out in front of him, he sighed and gazed up into the branches of the trees above.  Then he asked, exactly in the manner of a person posing the most casual of questions:  “So what’s going on, Shagrat?  What’s behind all this sudden and intense interest in vegetation?  Is there anything going on that should be beginning to raise my concern?”

“I don’t think it’s anything for you to worry about,” Shagrat replied.  “Maz just seems to want to witter on about hazelnuts the whole time and Rukush – well, you know I’ve never rated him for having all that much going on upstairs.  As for that berk Azof, he -”  

“No, Shagrat.  What about you?”

“Oh.  Well,” the Uruk replied, but then he stopped and sat, wearing a curiously absent, unfocussed expression for so long that it seemed he must have surely lost his thread; not staring into space after all Faramir realized, but watching the fluttering poplar leaves as they flickered green-and-white, green-and-white in the sunlight, away on the far side of the glade. 

“This isn’t exactly the kind of thing you want to have out in the open,” he said at last.  And the trouble is, it’s all a bit –“

“Personal?”

“No.  No.  Airy-fairy,” Shagrat said, shaking his head.  “I won’t come out of it well.  And you mightn’t think about me the same way afterwards, if you were to hear it.”

The Prince wondered what on earth, given what he already knew about Shagrat’s background and the colourful events of his past life, there could possibly be that would cause him further dismay.   “Shagrat?” he began at last, seizing upon the least unlikely of the limited number of options that presented themselves to him, “you know I’m not going to be – jealous, of the trees, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

“You’re not?”

“That is – I,” Faramir said, his brow wrinkling with distaste as a succession of lively images, each as unwelcome as the next, played themselves through his mind - “I rather suppose that depends on what, exactly, you’ve been doing with them.”

“It’s nothing like that!” Shagrat exclaimed, puffing up with indignation.

“What _is_ it like, then?”

The Orc shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable.  “It’s - I don’t know that I can explain it,” he replied, sounding wretched.

Faramir urged him to try.

“You know like I said, last night I had this – funny turn – in the woods.”

“A funny turn,” Faramir repeated, carefully keeping his face straight.

“Yes.  After some of the stuff that went on when I was in prison – you know –“

They had never really spoken about the aftermath of Faramir’s departure from the Land of Shadow;  ‘after you left me in the lurch!’ was something Shagrat had shrieked at him during the course of one especially heated argument, but other than that the Uruk refused point-blank to discuss any of the consequences those past events might have had for him, and Faramir, whose usual courage tended to falter where this particular issue was concerned, had never pressed for an answer as he wasn’t certain that he really wanted to know.  His tone sober now, he said - “this was back in Mordor.”

The Orc nodded.  “First off, it started happening in the cells.  In the beginning, only after they’d really been putting me through it, but since then, other times too.  Not often these days, but sometimes some things  – I mean other sorts of things – bring it on and I find myself wondering if I might still be back there.  When it happens I don’t know what’s what and it’s – frightening, that’s all.”

“Shagrat, Mordor as you knew it has gone,” Faramir said, thinking with a shudder of that empty, shadow-haunted realm.  “There’s nothing left, only waste, and rocks and desert - I’ve seen it!  Believe me, you’ve really nothing more to fear.”

“I’m not afraid of being back in Mordor!” cried Shagrat, inexplicably affronted by this notion, for Faramir, who had of course been there once before the fall, thought Mordor was an absolutely terrifying place. 

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be – you know, bad, to be back,” the Orc went on, “but when it comes to it I’ve been there and done all that already so odds are if I had to, I could see it through again,” – and here his lips pulled back from his teeth in a truly horrible grin – “one way or the other.  It’s not knowing – the times I’m not able to be sure.  When I think I must not be right in the head.  That’s what scares me.  Do you – d’you see?”

Faramir, who didn’t really, shrugged non-committaly, wondering what all this had to do with his original question, which as far as he remembered related to poplar trees.  Shagrat, realizing his failure to get his point across, waved his claw in frustration.  

“Take those kids last night.  They minute they clocked me properly they ran off screaming and yelling like I was the worst thing they’d ever seen - and I don’t blame them, ‘cause that’s the way it’s always been.  But - you!  I know what you say and I know what you’ve told me, but deep down, I still don’t get it.  You must have had me every which way by now, so I don’t see why you’re still hanging about – I can’t see any reason you’d want to be anywhere near me.  And I suppose I’m scared that one day you’ll wake up to yourself and take a good look - just one proper look - and that’ll be that, because at last you’ll see what everybody else does, and you’ll see what I’m really like.”

“I don’t know how it is for the others,” Shagrat went on slowly, “but all it is, is that when I’m near these big trees, just sitting quietly, after a while all that - fear, as well as all that other sorry, miserable stuff I’ve always got going on at me in here,” and he broke off, striking the side of his head with the heel of his fist, not gently -  “it all sort of – _goes_ , and just for a bit, it’s like it never even mattered.  When I’m not being ground down by it the whole time I feel like I’m almost  –“

“Calm?  Serene?  At peace?” Faramir interrupted eagerly.

“I was going to say ‘all right,’” the Orc concluded, a little lamely.  “Like someday I could even be - worth bothering about, or something, you know?” He stopped for a moment, frowning.  “I suppose the way you said it does sound better.” 

“So you come all this way, all that distance and effort and – well, danger!  Merely, in essence, to feel a bit better about yourself?” Faramir exclaimed, astonished.  “And worthwhile?”

“I’d happily go a lot further than this!” Shagrat replied earnestly.  “Because when I’m with these trees, after a while all sorts of things kind of - come to me.  Things I didn’t know about - couldn’t even start to think about, before.  And then sometimes I wonder.  Maybe if it hadn’t been for all that – that stuff and nonsense, the things they did to me and that I did, in Mordor, I mightn’t have ended up like this.  Might even’ve had a shot at being - _better_ , like a different kind of -” he broke off again, sighing.  “I told you it was wishy-washy, didn’t I?  I bet it all sounds daft to you, doesn’t it.”

“Shagrat,” Faramir reassured him absently, for he was thinking more of the other things the Orc had told him, turning it all over and over in his mind, “you shouldn’t let these things worry you.  You’re safe, and you seem reasonably sane, at least to me.”

The Uruk gave Faramir a lopsided grin before hunching his back and staring moodily off into the distance once again.  He didn’t think he’d gotten his point across too well at all. 

 


	9. Down in a springtime glade.

 

Faramir eyed his companion, who had been gazing away into the trees for the past few moments, a morose expression on his face.  The Uruk seemed on the verge of falling into one of the sloughs of depression that all too frequently overtook him; characteristically black moods that were easy enough to recognise – but even easier, in the Prince’s experience, to divert.

“Shagrat,” he suggested, “why don’t you lie down for a minute.”  The Orc, as if suddenly recollecting his whereabouts, gave a brusque shake of the head.   

“Lie back a minute, Shagrat,” Faramir insisted.  He guided his companion down until he was on his back in the fresh spring grass.

There was a certain point that Faramir had recently discovered, below the angle of the Uruk’s jaw and slightly above the collarbone, that if manipulated in just the proper manner could bring about most encouraging results.  The neck of Shagrat’s undershirt was open and in the absence of his usual chain-mail access, this time, was easy.  Faramir brushed his lips across the sensitive spot, breathing out gently to let the Uruk feel the tendrils of warm, moist breath against his skin; and right away most of Shagrat’s upper body twisted up and round to meet him, suddenly lithe and limber as a cat’s.  Faramir smiled to himself.  Of course finesse wasn’t strictly required when dealing with Shagrat, for the Orc was far more accustomed – expected, in fact - to be handled any old how: but he still enjoyed making some kind of effort.

After a while he shifted his attention a little lower, kissed and breathed a trail over the Uruk’s left shoulder, where some grievous injury, clearly suffered many years ago had left its mark as a great expanse of flat, pale scars.

Blinking rapidly the Orc drew back at once, barking - “Faramir!  What d’you think you’re playing at?”  Hastily he pulled his shirt back into place and clutched it tight around his neck, muttering by way of explanation - “it’s – weird, to have you touching all that mess, there.  I don’t feel much in that shoulder any more, if you must know.”

Shagrat jumped in his place as Faramir lowered his lips to the Orc’s craggy brow instead; almost squirmed away in panic as he began kissing the empty eye-socket then kissed a path – by way of the bridge of Shagrat’s twice-broken nose – down the trail of thin, white claw-marks that scored his face and neck.

“Goldilocks!” the Orc yelped, “you’re not supposed to do that!“

“And what exactly,” Faramir murmured, nuzzling again at his companion’s collarbone, “would you say I’m supposed to not be doing?”

He spent a moment extracting Shagrat’s right hand, which had been clenched into a white-knuckled fist and was tucked firmly beneath the Orc’s back.  After some gentle, insistent efforts Faramir was able to stretch the remaining fingers straight, and he kissed the badly-healed spaces where the missing ones had been hacked away.  Sighing, he held the Uruk’s maimed hand to his cheek, closed his eyes and leaned his face against it.    

The Orc was staring at him.  “You shouldn’t be bothering about all the duff bits.”

As he was doing all this, Faramir had been deftly stroking his companion through the fabric of his breeches.  All in all this meant he’d been hard for while - quite as hard as it was possible for him to be - by the time Faramir finally worked the shaft of his erection out into the open, and bent his head down to meet it.

Shagrat gave out a little whimper as Faramir rolled his tongue over the exposed flesh, and choked out faintly - “and you know, I’ve often thought that’s got to be about the duffest part of the lot -”

And this might even have been true: the Orc’s male organ bore obvious evidence of having been used cruelly in the past, for as Shagrat had once put it -

“the crowd that had their claws in me a long time used to think it was a great laugh, knocking seven bells out of my bits.”

As a result the Uruk’s member was battered-looking in the main, and what stood for his foreskin was not much more than a notch-sided remnant, torn and bedraggled as the fraying wings on the little brown butterflies that would be found fluttering in these water-meadows at the end of summer.  This area of the Orc’s body at times was abnormally sensitive to being touched, and Faramir suspected that the kind of stimulation he was used to receiving often caused him a certain amount of discomfort, if not pain outright.  He generally did, however, seem to feel pleasure when Faramir put his mouth on him and he did it now, kissing and licking all over his genitals, massaging with his hands and at the same time stroking the soft tissue behind.     

The personal odour of Shagrat, a potent combination of dirt and leather, sweat and blood, was something that had always loomed large – almost as an unwelcome third person in his and Faramir’s relationship.  But for once the Orc smelled, and tasted, of next to nothing at all; he carried only the faint clean scent of river water, mixed with a tang of silt and aquatic sediments.  To his extreme surprise Faramir found that he felt this absence keenly, with a near-personal sense of loss.  Striving to recapture some of that familiar sense of him, he took as much of the Orc’s member as he was able into his mouth and tried and tried again – failing each time, until his eyes watered with the effort, to do as Shagrat so often did and to swallow him down into his throat.  The taste of a slight spread of salty fluid at the back of his tongue soon set Faramir back to kissing and licking frantically; he was acutely aroused himself, and the heat and sensation of the Orc’s member in his mouth as he manipulated him only provided a limited feeling of relief.  

Shagrat’s erections, these days, were never especially proud or rampant, his immediate inclination always seeming to lean towards concealment: to try and hide himself out of harm’s way.  His orgasms were just the same and were invariably painfully understated, low-key affairs.  It never took much to satisfy him either; by Faramir’s reckoning, he’d barely had the chance to get started by the time Shagrat was hauling him up into his arms away from any possibility of close contact with the products of his imminent ejaculation, for the Orc had some peculiar and deep-seated hang-ups about his own bodily fluids too.  So he finished him with his hands, cupping them round him loosely so that Shagrat could direct the speed and pressure and set his own pace – and as an afterthought backed that up with his upper thigh, to give the Uruk an additional something to rub against.  And that was all it took: a moment later and the Uruk was clasping Faramir in a rigid embrace and pressing his body up towards him convulsively, his head jamming against Faramir’s shoulder as he bit back a short cry of pleasure in his throat.  The Prince felt heat and wetness flood his fingers, and a faint spasm tugged at his own groin answering Shagrat’s response, but he resolutely ignored it.  He eased the Uruk back onto the ground again, giving him ample time to recover.   

Faramir looked down at him, lying there in the soft green grass, with his head thrown back among the cuckoo-flowers and buttercups, every part of him looking so completely out of place that the very air around him was practically shimmering in reaction against it; and he thought of the Orc as he had been when they met for the first time in Mordor, recalling a mental picture of a desperately uncertain Shagrat, grovelling in front of him on all fours, painfully aroused but in his misery absolutely unable to do a thing to resolve it.  It was quite the study in contrasts, and while their journey had certainly been a long one, considering the span of years that had passed between that point and this, in real terms Faramir didn’t think it had taken much at all to uncover him, revealing the still-uncertain yet oddly - sometimes even - _promising_ person that the Orc was turning out, against all expectations, to be underneath.

“Shagrat,” Faramir told him gently, “I think I do see what you’re really like.”

But his companion showed no sign of having heard what the Prince had said, and when he did reply only seemed embarrassed. 

“You shouldn’t’ve,” Shagrat was muttering.  “Done that just now, I mean.  I know you can’t have gotten much out of it.”  

Faramir arched his eyebrows.  “Well then, you often used to do something similar for me.  What was that like?”

The Uruk propped himself up on his elbows and squinted at him.  “Seeing to you got me so hard I couldn’t think straight,” he replied earnestly.   “Once you were done I’d have to go and finish myself off and I’d barely last a minute – less than that. Most of the time it was over as soon as my hand went down to touch it.”

“I’ll never understand why you felt it necessary to hide away from me as you did.”

“Come off it, Goldilocks.  I remember what you thought about me back then.  And seeing some dirty old Orc with his cock standing straight up like a tent-post – take it from me, you’d have done your nut.”

“On the contrary,” Faramir replied, “if the ‘dirty old Orc’ I was seeing were to have been you, I’m quite certain I’d have –“  but his native honesty made him stop there and he concluded - “at the very least I’d have had mixed feelings about it, you can be sure.” 

Seeming to be in agreement, the Uruk said - “I didn’t use to rate that side of things too highly either.  Before you came to Mordor, I barely ever even bothered wanking myself off much.  Didn’t see the point.  I could take it or leave it, before.”

In spite of himself, Faramir had to ask.  “And what about – afterwards?”

Shagrat frowned and looked down at his hands.  “For a long time, the state I was in, well - I couldn’t.  And then even after my – you know, my ‘waterworks’ and everything got fixed, I didn’t want to, because of the trouble that kind of carry-on had brought me before. ”

This was something the Orc had an occasional habit of doing: sometimes he would throw – apparently quite unwittingly, into previously casual conversation – snippets of horribly intimate information.  Reasonably certain as Faramir was that he wasn’t doing this on purpose, when it happened it was still disconcerting, as the details he’d divulge often revealed far more than the average person could ever want to know about his generally dreadful past experiences.     

Within an extremely restricted set of specifications however, Shagrat was actually a rather perceptive fellow and immediately registered his companion’s dismay.  “Don’t get me wrong Faramir,” he explained hastily.  “Everything ‘downstairs’ was working fine again, there’s no need to worry on that score.  And it never stopped me giving – or taking - the odd rodgering myself afterwards either.  I was only on about that other stuff, because as far as that goes I was back to square one again, wasn’t I?”

“By ‘other stuff’ do you mean -

“I don’t mean anything,” Shagrat interrupted, shaking his head irritably.  “Come on, Goldilocks.  Let’s not talk any more about this.”

Apparently the Orc thought this was his cue to provide them with some variety of distraction as following another awkward silence, he suddenly suggested:    

“You could maybe try putting it in me for a bit.  If you want.”

Faramir looked round at him in surprise.  Up until this point, Shagrat’s feelings towards any kind of –well, to put things euphemistically - back-door activity, arising as they did from a complete and long-standing personal aversion to it - had never been in the slightest shred of doubt. 

“I mean your cock,” the Orc elaborated, quite seriously.  “You could put it in - down there.  Up my jacksie.  You know.”

“I do understand what you’re talking about, Shagrat,” Faramir said, still nonplussed.  “And I thank you for the offer.  But are you sure?”

The Uruk nodded briefly, slipping out of his breeches with surprising dexterity.  “Only if you want.”

The conundrum facing Faramir was a ticklish problem, indeed.  Loath as he was to discourage any spontaneous expressions of sexual adventurousness in his companion, he was well aware that the Orc’s previous attitude to the prospect of a.....a possible physical union between them could perhaps be best described as being: astonishing strait-laced.   

His current proposal once rejected however, was not an offer that Shagrat was especially likely to ever repeat.  Pushing his very real doubts to the back of his mind – and with a certain spirit of now-or-never inevitability, the Prince made himself place a tentative hand on the Uruk’s bare buttocks.  Not quite able to meet his gaze as he went about it, he spent a moment insinuating his fingertips into the Orc’s backside, working them back and forth carefully to try to help him to relax.  Their tricky situation wasn’t in any way helped by the fact that as he laboured away, Faramir could hear Shagrat, actually grinding his teeth.

After carrying on in this manner for a while, Faramir realised that the Orc was watching him, a most peculiar expression on his face.  “Faramir,” he said shortly, “this isn’t exactly my first time.   There’s no need to bother faffing about, trying to break things to me gently.  I have done this – quite a bit of it - before.”

“But have you, Shagrat?” Faramir cried, in earnest.  “Have you really, though?  You are aware that this has potential to be quite a pleasurable experience, even from your point of view?  You do know that, don’t you?”

“So I’ve heard,” the Orc replied, and the great biting muscles in his cheek bunched visibly as he clenched his jaw.  “Don’t go holding your breath on my account, though.  Just stick it in and get it over with and we’ll be away.”

“Look here,” Faramir sighed, rocking back on his heels, “I do appreciate your generous offer, Shagrat, but I’m not at all sure that this is such a good idea.  I don’t know what made you think of it, really.”

“I bet you’d like to have a go, wouldn’t you?  Seems the least I can do, seeing as you just brought me off so nicely.” 

He was lying with his hands firmly under his back again.  “I wouldn’t,” he muttered as Faramir, with more than a slight sense of having been here before, hauled one of his arms, followed by the other, out into the open again.  “You don’t want me ending up taking a swing at you in the heat of things by mistake –“

Shagrat broke off as Faramir slapped one of the Orc’s hands decisively down onto his left hip.  The other he wrapped into a loose fist around his erection, and over it he held his own hand, which he used to direct him - making him stroke it.  Mercifully, this was enough of a diversion to keep both of them quiet for quite a while.

“There, Shagrat,” Faramir said eventually, his voice hoarser than he’d been expecting, “now as you see, I’m entirely at your disposal.  Guide me in – or don’t do it.  It’s up to you.” 

The Uruk bit his lips.  “Maybe, instead of that, how about if we both went at it – at the same time.  Together, eh?”

Faramir thought that was an admirable proposition and said so.  Then he kissed the Orc’s face, whispering sweet nothings in his ear, and after a time suggested - “Shagrat.  Perhaps if you tried for a moment opening your eye -?“

Shagrat met his gaze with a deeply worried look.  And then his face softened, as if he had suddenly remembered who he was with and what he was doing there.  Faramir felt the Orc’s tense body under him, if not relaxing exactly, then at least growing noticeably less rigid.  He sighed, and for a moment ran his hands up and down each of Faramir’s forearms then reached up to touch his chest, idling his fingertips through the soft curls of golden hair.

“Go on then,” Shagrat said at last, just a little nervously.  Shifting into place, he took hold of Faramir by the hips again and pulled him closer with a slight, encouraging sort of movement.  And it seemed he really was as ready as he’d ever be: the Prince positioned himself between the Orc’s legs, drew his breath, and gingerly eased his way in. 

There was some resistance from the ring of muscles before him, but the palmful of Shagrat’s semen with which he’d remembered to slick himself at the last moment helped, and it was less than Faramir had been expecting.  The sensation as he entered him – a dizzying combination of warmth and softness, overlain by a feeling of tightness and wonderful constriction – the sensations were exquisite.  It was all too much for Faramir and he had to stop short for a moment, keeping himself quite still, simply to halt the approaching orgasm that threatened to overwhelm him far too soon.  And this was a difficult task, for his very consciousness seemed - for the present, at least - to have rooted itself somewhere between the inside of his erect cock and the pleasurable ache in his balls and his lower groin; in the sense of pressure and tension that had been increasing there for some time now, that signified his urgent need for release.  At last he felt he had regained control enough to allow him to resume.  Faramir began pushing himself into the Uruk’s body, moving cautiously at first but in a series of increasingly erratic thrusts, while Shagrat lay under him still and stiff as a board.   

Poor Faramir!  He was a kind man, an unfailingly caring and generous lover (excepting his earliest encounters with Shagrat, bungled only through complete lack of experience; so very nearly - almost), and he knew that in theory -  as well as from first-hand experience - there was ( if he could only be sure of finding it!) an area on the person lying beneath him, that if set about correctly, just....so! - would undoubtedly provoke some intense and pleasurable response.  He tried everything he could think of; varying his penetrations of the Orc by depth and angle and vigorousness, each in turn.

He noted that Shagrat had his eye shut again, was wincing noticeably - and was continuing to move not so much as a muscle throughout.  

For an instant The Prince of Ithilien found himself wondering if it wouldn’t be better for him to simply finish quickly, to – as the Uruk had himself suggested –‘get it over with’.  And he could have done that; after all he had been struggling to hold back his own climax for some time now, almost from the first moment they’d started this thing.  Yes, secure in the knowledge that because of the strength of his regard for Faramir, Shagrat would undoubtedly let him do whatever he wanted to him, he could have used the Uruk to take his pleasure very easily indeed.  But that went to the crux of the matter, didn’t it?  Tied as it was to the reason the Uruk had always held such a low opinion of the act in which they were currently engaging: throughout that distant, but apparently still-harrowing past during which he’d been forced to perform in whatever manner those hateful, nameless others who’d once had hold of him wished, his personal feelings had never for a moment been taken into account and it was no wonder he’d come to view this kind of congress as something to be endured, leading only to sensations of fear, pain and revulsion.

“Shagrat?” Faramir began, full of concern for his companion.  Framing the Orc’s face, he soothed him with hands that were only shaking slightly.  “Is everything - are you all right?   If not we’ll stop - this instant –“

“No.  It - it’s - fine.  But could you maybe kiss me a little bit Faramir?” Shagrat muttered, eye still squeezed closed.  “That might help.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Faramir exclaimed, petting the Uruk’s hair haphazardly, trying, with little success, to smooth it straight.  “Of course I want do that.  Of course I will.  Of course.”  

This wasn’t easy to manage however, because reaching one another, from the position they were already holding and given the slight, but under these circumstances significant height differential between the two parties involved required quite a feat of bodily contortion.   They were yearning towards each other – the big Orc stretching from the waist up, and Faramir bending as best he could from the waist down when the body of one – or both of them, in some way, somewhat – jack-knifed.

Lurching clumsily against his companion, the Prince caught himself, exclaiming aloud in dismay.  He was working his lower back cautiously, wondering if he had perhaps pulled a muscle - when the Orc’s good eye opened wide in surprise. 

“Ah.”  Shagrat said.  “Oh!”

“Shagrat!” Faramir cried, freezing in place.  “Is something wrong?”

“No,” the Orc replied, quickly shaking his head.  “No, that feels – “

“Am I hurting you?”

The Uruk was still shaking his head vaguely, with a perplexed look.  “No, it’s – all right.  It feels…. different.  You should try doing that again.”

Faramir rolled his hips slightly and as he did it - to his amazement, felt Shagrat straining his lower body up to meet him.

“Oh!” the Orc gasped, his head snapping back as he blinked his eye rapidly in surprise. “That – that’s different!”

The Prince repeated the movement, took as his much of his weight on his elbows and his knees as he was able - kept rolling his hips and screwing himself clumsily into Shagrat.  The time for finesse was long gone - it was all Faramir could do to continue to contain himself, but this slip in technique – if there had been one – turned out to make not too much difference, for the Orc was soon raising his buttocks up as far as he was able, hands alternately bunching underneath to lift them that little bit higher, then clutching handfuls of the grass by his sides as he lay there with a faintly dazed expression.

“Here Shagrat,” Faramir murmured, as an idea came to him, that if he’d time to prepare or even think clearly about they were doing beforehand would no doubt have occurred to him much sooner.  He grabbed for the heap of discarded clothing that lay nearby – landing his coat jacket or Shagrat’s breeches, both items cast off in the heat of the moment; he didn’t know, or care, which – and wadding it into a rough pad, managed to slip the makeshift bolster in under the Uruk’s hips.  “You should find this’ll help.”

And it was some kind of improvement, for with relatively little effort on his part Faramir found that he was now hitting the spot (so to speak) with every movement of his lower body, and that his actions were in turn provoking all sorts of hitherto unexpected reactions from his Orcish companion.  After continuing in this manner for a while, he realized that he was unconsciously timing his movements to coincide with the series of soft, helpless noises that the Uruk was making and breathlessly, watching him through his eyelashes, the Prince enjoyed for a moment the uncharacteristic sight of Shagrat positively writhing in ecstasy there on the grass.    

The sensations, long stimulation and – yes, even the spectacle of the enraptured Orc beneath him (unpalatable, admittedly, as this would have been to most people) – had all brought Faramir very close to his climax, and with the sound of his blood rushing loud in his ears, he buckled down to finish, then, and set about the Uruk properly, jamming his body into him in a series of vigorous, workmanlike thrusts.

But Shagrat’s hand shot immediately to the back of his head, grasping him tightly by a handful of hair.  At the same time the Orc’s thighs gripped him below the waist, fixing him in place so firmly that any further movement on Faramir’s part was rendered absolutely impossible.  The Prince had been on the very cusp of orgasm but the Uruk halted it, slotting his free hand down between their joined bodies and squeezing the base of his erection with such unbearable pressure that for a horrifying moment Faramir could have sworn his cock and balls were actually beginning to shrivel and retract back on themselves.  His eyes glazed over with tears of anguish that came unbidden and the rush of his straining heartbeat was deafening, but still he could just make out the Orc saying to him - 

“Not just yet you don’t.  Not yet.”

For a moment Faramir, groaning weakly, sobbing for breath, had to rest his forehead against the Uruk’s broad chest as he waited for the wave of faintness that was threatening to overcome him to subside.  He soon regained control of himself however.

“You – !” Faramir spluttered in outrage, still pinned between his companion’s legs, but rearing up to put as much distance between them as he was able, “you wretched creature!  Shagrat, you wretch!  The orgasm of my life –  how could you?  And after everything I’ve done for you  –“

“Wait,” the Orc hushed him, “just – wait, won’t you.  Two minutes.”

He brought out the hand that he’d been using so treacherously to clutch Faramir into submission and put it in his mouth. 

“Can’t do it,” he admitted after a moment.  His Orcish accent had thickened markedly, and was making him slur his words: “ _I can’t,_ _so you’ll’av’ter, won’t c’her?”_  He pressed his index and middle fingers encouragingly up against the Prince’s lips, eventually prompting him to - “go on and suck them for a minute, all right?”

“Suck on your own filthy fingers!”

Shagrat rolled his eye.  “Well I would’ve, but you’ve gotten me in such a state, haven’t you your Highness, that I’ve no spit to speak of.  It’s your own fault, isn’t it?”  “ _S’yerrown fault is’nit?_.”

“How you could imagine I would co-operate with you after an – an outrage on my person such as has just been perpetrated, spurring you on in whatever acts of depraved mischief-making I’ve no doubt you’re planning!  You’re certainly going to have to think again –“

“Oh, give it a rest, Goldilocks.  Just go on and wet them a little bit, eh?”

With great ill grace, Faramir complied, after which the Orc, simultaneously releasing his twin holds on the Prince’s head and his hips, reached around behind and pushed his newly-moistened fingers in.  Shagrat moved them adroitly, pushing, kneading at some hidden point of pleasure on the inside until  Faramir’s spine arched backwards under the stimulation and he uttered a wordless cry.     

“There you go,” Shagrat gasped, “there.  See?  Now that, Goldilocks, is what you’ve been doing to me feels like.”

By this point Faramir felt dazed: either by the intensity of the sensations Shagrat had provoked in him, or dazzled by the morning sunlight that, after a moment, he realized was shining down through the canopy of leaves above them and directly into his eyes: he wasn’t certain which.

“Worth holding off for, for a minute, don’t you think?” muttered the Orc, by now seemingly as beside himself as Faramir was, almost.

“Give it a rest yourself, Shagrat,” the Prince replied, if a little distractedly.

They carried on, moving in unison for a time, but all too soon the peak of pleasure that Faramir had recently been approaching was once again in his sights.  He stopped, crouching over the Orc in an awkward hunch, and resting his weight on his forearms, laid his face on the Uruk’s sweat-slippery stomach, speaking against it.

“Shagrat, my – “ he began in a low, urgent voice, breaking off as he realized – by no means for the first time  - that most of the conventional endearments wouldn’t, of course sit well upon an Orc.  “My dear – Shagrat.” 

Throughout all this, the Uruk hadn’t removed his hand from between Faramir’s buttocks and the fingers that were in him resumed pressing and massaging helpfully.  Encouragingly.  

Faramir whined in dejection and gritted his teeth.  “Shagrat,” he said, “I’m afraid I simply can’t carry on like this for very much longer.”

“Fine by me,” the Orc replied, at once.  Then he did something very decisive with his left hand; moved the fingers that were still lodged inside Faramir in a way that made him pitch forwards suddenly, bringing the two of them together again in a sharp, unexpected contact.  And that was enough to finish Faramir, who up until that moment hadn’t been quite ready, or so he thought.  He lay on top of Shagrat, pressing close and closer to him, gasping for breath and shuddering as he let the great wave of pleasure that had overtaken him – was still overtaking him, carry him where it would.  

After a while he returned to himself, somewhat, and to the pleasant awareness that he was still lying atop (and to some extent inside) Shagrat, his head resting on the Uruk’s ribs and rising and falling slightly with each of the Orc’s deep, slow breaths.  One of Shagrat’s arms was holding him across his back and with the other hand he was stroking his hair, cautiously.

Faramir raised himself up onto his forearms again and grinned down at his companion, while the Orc met his gaze with the sheepish expression he often wore at such times.

“So.  The ’orgasm of your life,’ eh?” he said.

The Prince sighed in and out, happily.  “Something along those lines, Shagrat.”

“And you’re not – not narked at me or anything, are you, for when I - you know, for when I threw a spanner in the works for you earlier?”

“Not angry in slightest,” Faramir confirmed.  The foolish, happy smile he was still wearing was beginning to make his face ache, though he felt not much inclination to extinguish it.     

“Yeah.” The Orc smiled lop-sidedly back at him.   “Yeah.  In the end I thought it was – all right, that.  More than all right, to tell the truth.”

The pair of them eventually got around to disengaging from one another.  

“Stop a minute,” Shagrat said as Faramir made to move away from him afterwards, “let me just – sort you out a bit first.”  And to Faramir’s surprise the Orc, working a little self-consciously, proffered a bunch of damp vegetation with which he began blotting at him.  As he wiped him down, Faramir noticed a tell-tale patch of moisture on his companion’s abdomen, that seemed, now he thought about it, to be matched by a suspicious area of wetness on his own lower chest  -

“Shagrat!” he exclaimed.  “Did you – again?  Have you – “

“....yes,” the Uruk replied hesitantly, turning away as he pulled on his breeches, “yes.  I suppose I was, well, concentrating, more, on you at the time, but I think I must have.  I mean I didn’t get – hard again or anything, but I think you must’ve made me come again.  Yeah.  It….looks like maybe you did.”

Faramir was delighted.  “Oh, Shagrat!  ‘More than all right’, in that case, indeed!”

“I never even knew it could do that,” the Orc said, uncertainly.   “Did you?”

“You’re asking me?”

 “I - suppose!”

“I can’t say I’ve heard of such a thing before,” Faramir told him, “but then I’ve never been especially experienced in these sorts of matters, as you well know.”   He took hold of the Uruk’s hand.  “So then, Shagrat!  What d’you think we should do to mark this momentous occasion?  I was thinking, perhaps we could take a short walk?”

“You want to go on a walk?” the Orc said incredulously.  “For a walk, now, with me?  Couldn’t we do that a bit later on, Goldilocks?”

“Unless of course you were wanting –“ the Prince let go of him, breaking off doubtfully.   It was true, he considered, that Shagrat had made quite an effort, travelled no small distance to be here, all for reasons of his own that had nothing at all to do with him.   “Unless you find you might want some time by yourself instead, because you were planning on – on communing with your trees in some manner instead.”  Faramir nodded vigorously, by now having almost convinced himself.  “I’m sure it would be better if I were to leave you alone for that?”

Shagrat yawned luxuriously, stretched, then settled further into the space at the base of the fallen tree until he was lying full-length, leaning back against the trunk.

“Well now, Goldilocks,” he replied lazily, beckoning him closer with a jerk of his head.  “Maybe I’ll begin communing with the trees, or whatever you think I ought to be doing with them, in a minute.   But, if you’ll care to join me, first I’m think I’m going to kick things off by having a nice kip.”

Faramir, who’d also had an early start and an event-filled morning of his own already, didn’t need to be asked twice.  He lay down beside Shagrat, fitting himself back against his companion’s chest as the Uruk’s arms, one sliding under and the other over him, went around his body immediately.   The Orc’s knees fitted themselves to the backs of Faramir’s legs until they were spooning together comfortably, and the low rumble of satisfaction, pitched at a level somewhere below the normal range of human hearing that Faramir felt running through him and which instinct told him was originating somewhere deep in Shagrat’s chest, made him drowsily wonder why on earth he hadn’t been the one to think of suggesting this.    


	10. Dream sequence.

 

As he lay in the grass, a slumbering Faramir cradled in his arms, Shagrat found he had a number of things to think about.  He began by tensing his buttocks, cautiously.  There was a little tenderness there - and that was not surprising, as Faramir hadn’t exactly been pulling any of his punches towards the finish, but the ache was if anything vaguely pleasurable, putting Shagrat more in mind of the excitement and intimacy they’d just shared, instead of dark recollections of – of anything else.   Because it hadn’t, really, been anything like the times – those many miserable times – he remembered from before.  Shaking his shoulders irritably in a bid to rid himself of such dismal thoughts, the Orc did his best to concentrate upon the present, because all in all, it had gone off a lot better than he could ever have hoped. 

Trust Goldilocks!  Which (barring of course that little – wobble – of his at the start when he’d feared his companion was on the verge of attack) he supposed he – must do, mustn’t he?  Especially as there had been little or no pain during their coupling - not even any bleeding from his backside afterwards (for Shagrat had covertly checked the handful of grass with which he’d cleaned himself before he dressed and in that respect at least, it had been absolutely spotless).  Now that certainly had to be some kind of first for him, didn’t it?  As was the matter of the satisfactory little climax he’d experienced, and though - to be strictly accurate - that might have involved physical sensations somewhat less than the fact of Faramir having gasped out the Orc’s name at his moment of orgasm, a fact that that invariably did all sorts of things to Shagrat.  Whatever the cause of it, he had never imagined there would be room for anything like actual enjoyment on his part.

Their mutual explorations, their eager pleasurings of one other – of course those were aspects of his association with Faramir that Shagrat had always relished.  But secretly he sometimes wondered – and particularly often at such times - whether it wasn’t the contented moments such as this, when they were together in quiet companionship on which he might place an even greater value.  Lying there sated, feeling utterly relaxed, the Orc’s head nodded forwards as he caught himself on the verge of falling asleep.  He blinked his good eye rapidly, trying hard to stay awake.  Times like this with Goldilocks, he thought distractedly, as unconsciousness finally overtook him, were just too good to miss.

In Mordor, he’d gone more years than he could count with never more than a few snatched moments of sleep.  Grinding fear and constant anxiety in the face of the threat of ambush or attack from his own compatriots - if not a formal enemy - could well have contributory factors and yet Shagrat was oblivious to the real reason for it, which was that he hadn’t slept because he couldn’t, because all through that time the ease from care that came with sleep and rest had deliberately been withheld him.  It was only another aspect of the mental conditioning to which their dark master had subjected his hapless Orcish foot-soldiers; one of the subtler, cruel methods by which the Lord of Mordor had exerted his control, but was no less effective for its simplicity.   

When Shagrat woke it was with feelings of contentment and deep refreshment, sensations so unfamiliar to him in his usual state that initially, he had some trouble appreciating what any of it meant.  It must have been late in the day, for the sun was low on the horizon and the woodland glade before him was lit with a dazzling, green-gold light.  The glade was bathed all around by a peculiar, greenish-golden light that seemed, oddly, to shine from no particular direction or source.  The grey poplars here – as most types of poplar were wont to do – had thrown up abundant suckers from their roots, which were of an age to have grown into tender young trees in their own right.  These saplings formed the understory of the grove and were all so similar in size, and the distance between them so regularly spaced as to give their arrangement a strangely formal, intentionally planted look.  The Orc noticed then - with a start that brought his heart hammering into his mouth - that he and Faramir were not alone, for suddenly standing between himself and the backdrop of light and leaves and encircling young trees there was (or had all at once appeared, because the Orc was quite certain he had not been there even a second before) the figure of a man: long-haired and wearing a suit of light armour over the gauzy grey-green fabric of his tabard, or long tunic, or dress. 

Shagrat scrambled to his feet.  

Strewth!  It was a tall bugger and no mistake, his height exactly matching Shagrat’s, inch for inch.  Seen from behind he had – well, he had a warrior’s build, didn’t he?  The same breadth of shoulders and lean length of limb.  There was, admittedly, a certain pansification-factor, on account of the clothes he was wearing – because frankly, it was a gown he had on, wasn’t it?  – which, all in all, seemed a most peculiar choice of garment to be yomping round wet water-meadows in.  The colour was a pale silvery-green – and very familiar, because funnily enough, now that Shagrat came to think about it, it looked to be almost the exact same shade as the unfurling new poplar leaves all around them.  But in spite of his ethereal attire, the stranger still had the undeniable air of a person with whom it would be most unwise for anyone to trifle.  He was in fact just the sort of sword-wielding, iron-clad and lordly-looking, full-of-himself _utter wanker_ that the Orc might well at one point have expected to look up from the ranks to see charging down on him from horseback, and even now he shivered at the vivid, if distant memory.    

“Calm yourself,” the stranger said then, apparently speaking to the world at large, for he had not yet troubled to turn and face Shagrat.  “There’s no need for either of us to be alarmed.”

Cocking his head, the Uruk stared at him.  He quietly hefted the sturdy tree-branch he’d grabbed for on waking - that he was still clutching - back and forth in a series of swift, exploratory swipes.  He was satisfied to note that the balance seemed about right.  Taking a deep breath he aimed for a spot just above the stranger’s left ear. 

“You can let go of that,” the man announced suddenly, still not turning round, “because it would be a pity, don’t you think, for anyone to start carrying on in that way, here?  It’s such a lovely, wonderful and restful place.  I know I’ve always thought so.  And as for you, my friend.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

Lowering his weapon slightly, the Orc stepped forward, clearing his throat.  He’d come to have a fairly well-developed sense of self-preservation, and while this situation was admittedly a little – on the odd side, on the other hand nothing as yet seemed seriously amiss.  

“I like it here too,” he replied, speaking to the back of the man’s head, as he noted for the first time that despite its nondescript, light-brown colour, the fellow had really rather pretty hair.  Well he ruddy well would do, wouldn’t he!  The man’s hair was shot with grey but it was fine and straight and looked very soft.  Feeling an odd, twisting sensation in the pit of his stomach, the recollection came to Shagrat that, back in the day - before things got shot entirely to buggery - he himself had had hair that looked a lot like that.  But that was once upon a time - so long ago he’d until this moment forgotten all about it.  It really had been that long before. 

“I come here sometimes,” the Orc volunteered eventually.  “Less often than I’d like, though.”

“I know that,” the man said.  “Of course I do.  These trees are a comfort to you.  But you could make more of an effort, perhaps.”

“I could,” Shagrat nodded.  “I suppose I could, at that. But, you know - it’s still a bit of a hike.”

A short silence stretched between them.  And while the Uruk would’ve sworn one hundred percent that he’d never seen this particular geezer before in his life, there seemed to be something in his manner; not in his looks _per se_ , because of course only the back of his head and his stupid dress were visible at this point, but still there was something terribly (in the sense that whatever quality it was that was possessed by the Man, or Elf, or shade, or whatever he was, promised to fill Shagrat with abject....terror) familiar about him.  In fact he looked as if he might even have been glowing a bit too, shining with the same gorgeous, gold-green colour that was suffusing the stand of trees.  The Uruk squinted over at him, trying to decide whether this radiant effect was but a trick of the light.          

 “So, you,” he said, at last.  “You – you come from round here, do you?”

The fellow didn’t reply and so after a moment Shagrat added - “or, you know, maybe like, out of it?”

The other fellow laughed – and predictably enough it was a silvery, melodious and joyful sound.  “Oh, Shagrat!  Truly, don’t you know?  You can’t really be mistaking me for some transcendent spirit of vegetation, can you?  Something conjured up out of the ground, or from the trees?”

“Oh, they’re nice trees all right,” Shagrat said cautiously, “but, I did wonder for a minute if perhaps you’d – gotten here - on account of all the good sex.”

“No,” the stranger  replied, “it wasn’t that, not really.”

“So, have you,” the Orc began, for some reason already anticipating in some measure the fellow’s answer “- come far?”

He turned towards Shagrat slightly, and it struck the Orc that there was something very familiar about his profile.

“I’ve come no further,” the man said, “than have you.”

Well that could mean anything.  Shagrat nodded sagely.  “Ah!”

“It is a lovely place.  But you should also to be aware,” (the stranger went on) “although in truth, the fact that I am telling you shows both of us that on some level you must already know, that there are other places that you and I could go.  Many realms to which you and I might travel -

“’Realms,’ you say?” Shagrat interrupted.  “Oh, ‘travelling to many realms’ now, is it?  Would these by any chance happen to be enchanted, magical realms?  If so I’m sure they’re very fancy.  S’nice for you.  ‘Realms’.  Lovely.  Gotcha!  Right.”

“We can call them ’places’ if you wish,” the man said, with an irritable shrug of the shoulders that put Shagrat in mind of something he knew he really ought to have been able to recognise, “ _places_ where someone like  – yourself, given time, given effort, might, through contemplation, and long reflection –“

“Reflecting?”  Shagrat snorted, thoroughly sick and tired by now of all this inane yet vaguely metaphysical clap-trap.  “Now how am I supposed to go about doing that d’you reckon?  Not much of a shiny surface am I?  We’re not in some bloody mystical dream mirror, you know.”

“Think so, do you?” the man said, tartly. 

“’And in these ‘places,’” he continued after a pointed pause, throughout which he had clearly been waiting for Shagrat to make some kind of objection, “by considered means of long and careful introspection, a person in your position might attempt at least in part to reclaim what once was lost to him.  Wherein a damaged, tortured –“

Shagrat had no choice but to flat-out feign deafness then.  “What’s that you’re saying?” he asked, speaking very loudly to drown out the other fellow.

“- in these places a tormented soul,” the man shouted, “such as ours -”

“No!  No!  Sorry!  Didn’t quite catch that.”

“ - might seek healing and solace and eventually become – whole.”

“Nope!  Still no idea what you’re on about!”

“Though naturally that would involve leaving - this place,” the man went on, ignoring him, “as well as all those who remain bound to it.”

Shagrat grunted.  “Is that right.”

“Yes.  Do you understand what I am trying to tell to you?”

Shagrat turned to look back briefly at Goldilocks, his dear, beloved Goldilocks, who was still sleeping fast against the fallen tree.  “Yeah, I think I get it,” he replied, “but I’m going to tell you straight: there’s no chance.”

“It is always your decision,” the man said lightly.  “But you should understand that when I say ‘whole’ I mean not only in body, but also the matter of –“

Shagrat shook himself irritably.  “I reckon I know what you meant.”

“You’re sure about that, are you?  For how else could you think of dismissing, so lightly –“

“I know what you meant!” 

The Uruk stepped nearer to the radiant fellow.  “Do I know you?” he asked warily, stopping just short of him.  “Have we – met?”

Speaking of mirrors, Shagrat, despite being an Orc was possessed of a tragically developed yet utterly conventional sense of aesthetics, which meant that he tended to steer clear of mirrors on principle.  He also strenuously avoided gazing into still pools of water, reflective surfaces in general  - and even did his best not to look too closely at the outline of his shadow, whenever he was forced to venture outdoors in the mid-day sun.  But he was familiar- all too painfully familiar - with his own appearance nevertheless, and so when the stranger turned towards him, so close that Shagrat could see the whites of his clear grey eyes (the other fellow, he still had two of them), the unmarked, yet recognizably similar line of his brow, and they were almost touching, nose to delicately shaped (and as yet, undamaged) nose, it was impossible for the Orc not to immediately recognise the shape of his own face in that of the stranger; and just for an instant, from the points of his Elvish ears to the flash of his teeth Shagrat beheld his own unbroken, mirror image -      

The man smiled, and there were depths of kindness in his eyes.

“For fucksakes!”  Shagrat yelped, jumping back away from him.  The green-gold light shone into his eyes and dazzled him, and the man vanished.

Shagrat woke properly, jerking awake with a start where he was lying.  He was still on the ground and still next to Faramir.  The Prince of Ithilien rolled over and embraced him drowsily.  

“You all right there, Shagrat?”

“Yeah.  I was just having  this – horrible dream.  I think I must’ve been – talking to myself, for a minute or something,” the Uruk said.

 

 

 


	11. Back to reality.

 

The Prince of Ithilien and his Orcish lover dozed on through the morning.  Shagrat’s sleep, this time, was mercifully untroubled, without any strange kinds of visions, prophecies, or dreams. 

He roused himself in the early afternoon, stretched, and crossed the glade to check on his drying things.  The clothes were warm from the sun and felt about as dry as they were likely to get, so he set about dressing himself only to realize, once he’d almost finished, that his companion had woken too and was lying propped on one elbow, intently watching him.   Shagrat looked away, struck with an immediate sensation of extreme self-consciousness.

“Now we’ve had our nap and you’ve finished putting yourself back to rights,” Faramir said, “I suggest we take that walk I was proposing.   I think we’ll start with a stroll down to the river.   No doubt it’s for the best, since you seem to have developed quite the sudden affinity for fresh-water swimming.” 

Shagrat, still discomfited by his companion’s recent scrutiny, was immediately on the defensive.  “What makes you think I was in a river?”

Faramir tutted.   “Apart from the state your clothes are in?  Really, Shagrat, I haven’t yet abandoned all use of my faculties to the extent that I could possibly to fail to notice when my dearest companion fetches up in front of me, completely drenched to the skin.”

“’Dearest companion’?”  Shagrat repeated uncertainly.  “D’you mean - is that supposed to be me?”

“You heard perfectly well what I said.  Don’t bother trying to change the subject.”

Shagrat sighed.  “Last night when those yokels from the village were chasing after me, well, I only went and fell in.  Then I couldn’t get out ‘cause – between you and me -  I can’t really swim.  So I ended up having to go with it.  It wasn’t so bad after the first bit.”  

“I wondered if it must have been something like that.  Because I spoke to the water bailiff on my way here this morning, and he told me he’d seen you floating downstream from the weir.”

Shagrat jumped to his feet.  “The water bailiff?  I thought at least I’d managed to give that bloke the slip!  Quick!  We’ll have to try and leg it before he catches up with us!”

“There’s no need, Shagrat,” Faramir assured him, “everything’s all right.”

“It’s not all right!  That fellow’s got a crossbow!  And a bloody big dog too!  Come on – on your feet! Get up!  What are you still hanging about for?  We shouldn’t even be here!  Especially not me!”

“I had some business with your friend the water bailiff.  And given your reaction perhaps it’s just as well I arranged to speak to him when I did, and even better that the man is now at least partly under my employ.”

“You arranged to speak to the water bailiff?  Why’s that?”

“Because it took him quite a while to register that I _didn’t_ want you shot on sight, as opposed to the exact opposite.  And even then I don’t think he’d have believed it, if he hadn’t been given his new instructions straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”

The Orc looked thoroughly bemused.  “What do you want to employ a water bailiff for?”

“Come on, Shagrat.  You might have guessed I had other business to attend to in these parts, or else I wouldn’t have needed to stay away for all of last night.  It certainly wouldn’t have taken me all evening to pay the local yeomanry for a brace of half-eaten dairy cattle!”

“It wouldn’t?”

“It wouldn’t, no.  But that’s beside the point, which is that I set out to get something for you.  A token of my esteem and also – my gratitude, if you like.”

“Gratitude?” the Orc exclaimed, still perplexed.  “Sorry.  I still don’t get it.  Who’s this you’re being grateful to again?”

Faramir regarded him steadily, and didn’t reply.

“And, in any case,” the Prince resumed after a long moment, “the thing I got you would be –  this.”  He made a quick, sweeping gesture that took in expanse of riverbank, for quite a way up and downstream.  “D’you like it?”

Shagrat stared at him, clearly nonplussed, and Faramir watched him as comprehension slowly dawned.  “You’ve never bought a river have you?” the Orc said.  “ _Can_ you even buy a river?  But what for?”

“I’ve only purchased a relatively short stretch of it.  Both sides of the riverbank downstream from the weavers’ village and this point.   And a few of the fields on the floodplain, mostly encompassing the main path and, of course, these trees of yours.  I’m not quite sure of the boundaries as yet – I’ll have to check with the tenant farmers.  There may be some more further down on either side.  I was chiefly after the rights of access, you know.”

 “You were?  And what do you want with all that?”

“I was mainly after the access rights,” Faramir told him very seriously, “because I wanted to be as sure as I could be that from here on in you’ll be able come and go freely, and in safety, to see your beloved trees, whensoever you should please.”

Shagrat shook his head, embarrassed.  “Nah!” he said, “you shouldn’t’ve.  Not on my account!  I’d have been all right carrying on and winging it –“

“No.  There will be no further talk of ‘winging it’ or anything else,” Faramir cut in emphatically. “It just won’t do, Shagrat, because I will not stand to have you – chased, hunted, or conflicted, or placed in any unnecessary danger for any longer.  After your Hobbit spoke to me I was beside myself with worry – and after the events of last night!  What if something had happened to you?”

"It turned out fine,” the Orc grumbled.

“Look at you!  Bruised and battered, dunked in a river and almost drowned.  That hardly seems like the usual definition of ‘fine’ to me!”

Shagrat was waving his companion’s concerns away when the Prince made a sudden grab for him, and hugged hold of him tightly.

“When I think of losing you,” he whispered, holding the Orc in a fierce embrace, “I’m beside myself.   Do you understand that?  I simply won’t stand for it, Shagrat.  Not _again_.  Gondor’s King – my so-called duty – all bedamned.  If it comes to a choice between you – and the rest of it.  Everything else - I simply won’t do it.  You must know, that from now on, I’ll always stand with you.”   

The Uruk crooked an eyebrow at him.  “You’re the King’s Steward.  Even thinking about what you just said.  That’s treason, isn’t it?”

 “I suppose it must be.  But I find I don’t much care.  You’ll say it’s all just words but I won’t change my mind, Shagrat.  I mean it.”

“Yeah?  Well – maybe best if you keep that under your hat for now, all right?”

“Yes, Shagrat.  I intend to.  Because when I think about losing you - ” and he broke off then, unable to continue.

By now Faramir’s eyes were leaking with emotion.  The Orc reached up his thumb – tentative, wonderingly, and smoothed the drops of water away.

 “There’s no need to take on like that Faramir,” he muttered.  “You don’t need to worry on that score ’cause that’s settled it.  I won’t be going _anywhere_.  I promise.”

They clung together, wordlessly pledging promises to one another for a time.  At last the Prince of Ithilien cleared his throat. 

“Now that your safe right of passage on the floodplain has been achieved,” he told Shagrat,  “there remains only one possible point of contention – and it seems against the odds that you’ve already managed to sort that out by yourself, in point of fact.”

“Eh?”

“I mean the weaving village by the gorge.”  Faramir reached into his jacket pocket.   “Up until first thing this morning everyone I spoke to was quite resolutely ‘anti’-“

“Anti what?”  Shagrat asked, and then realizing, he hunched his shoulders.  “I – oh.  Right.”

The Prince waved his concerns away.  “Never mind all that - this was before.  But now, see?  I have a letter of thanks from that boy’s parents here.  Head-man and matriarch of the village, as I understand it.  The mother especially so – and a real force to be reckoned with.  Within two minutes of meeting her, I could see she rules with an iron fist.” 

“That kid did say they were kind of high-up- “

“And both of them now falling over themselves for a chance to repay their debt to you.  In the light of what’s happened, I think we can be reasonably certain that the people up there will be more than happy to accommodate you.  I don’t think it’ll be a problem for us to be able to negotiate your coming and going through their village, as and when you please.””

“You’ll be the one to go and talk to them for me though, Goldilocks, won’t you?” Shagrat put in quickly. “Definitely going to be better if you sort all that stuff out, isn’t it.”

Faramir feigned surprise.  “Really?  You don’t want to go and accept their thanks in person?”

“Of course I don’t!  You know if I go there I’ll only put my foot in it and muck it up and say the wrong thing.”

“Well.  That is a pity.  Because I provisionally accepted the invitation to dinner they gave me on your behalf.  We’re going to drop in on them on your way home, tonight.”

“You did _what_?” The Orc was outraged.  “I can’t just go ‘dropping in’ to some village headman’s house!”

“It’ll be all right, Shagrat,” Faramir said soothingly.  “I’m sure it’ll do you no end of good to meet your nearest neighbours.  Chin up!” - and he all-but dug the increasingly irate Uruk in the ribs - “because I’ll be with you.  You know you can always count on me.”

Shagrat glowered at Faramir, growling, then knocked him down and straddled him.  The Prince sighed happily, pinned on his back in the grass.

They were more than two hours late for dinner, after that.


	12. Epilogue

 

The stars were out. 

An Orc and his human companion walked hand in hand, through stands of spring flowers at the edge of a wood.  As they went the two talked and laughed softly together.

The path they were taking meandered its way gradually uphill, wending in and out of cover, under the branches of twist-trunked, ancient old trees.   And the two continued on their way, at times in the open, at others in the shade-dappled gloom beneath the trees, neither out in full starlight or swathed in green darkness but always together, somewhere in-between.

THE END


End file.
